The Germans are slowly saving a little less again.

This is the result of a study that fintech Raisin from the “Weltsparen” platform created together with the consulting firm Barkow Consulting, and which is available exclusively to the FAZ.

Accordingly, it is not only the savings rate of private households that fell from 16.2 to 15 percent last year.

In the fourth quarter, i.e. the months October to December, it was only 11.4 percent.

However, the inflows to current, overnight and time deposit accounts in Germany have fallen even more significantly.

According to the study, they amounted to only 85.4 billion euros last year.

For comparison: In the first Corona year 2020, the Germans deposited an additional 148.9 billion euros in their accounts - more than ever before.

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in Business.

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The drop is also impressive per capita: in 2020, each and every German put an average of 1791 euros on the high edge.

In 2021 it was only 1027 euros per capita - a decrease of almost 43 percent.

According to the study, less flowed into the German accounts than since 2017.

Forced savings ended for the time being

The decline compared to the first corona year was much more pronounced in Germany than in other European countries.

"No other country in the euro zone saw a comparable decline, even though savings in almost all euro zone countries and the United Kingdom were lower than in 2020," says the study.

On average, the euro area saw a 31 percent drop in inflows to private accounts.

What's behind it?

Apparently it is a combination of reasons that led to this development.

A key reason was certainly the easing of the corona measures.

In the lockdown, people had saved a lot, simply because there were fewer opportunities to spend money.

In particular, the fact that many people took fewer holidays than usual or even none at all led to lower expenses and more savings.

Shopping beyond daily needs was sometimes not possible at all and in other phases it was at least so limited that many people did not feel like doing extensive shopping.

Older people in particular and those with higher incomes are therefore forced to save more money than usual.

Some may also have saved more out of concern about the future – but according to all surveys, that was the less decisive factor compared to the so-called forced savings, the money left over due to the corona measures.

It meant that in 2020 the German savings rate was extraordinarily high at 16.2 percent;

quarterly it was even more than 20 percent.

"Since the additional corona-related savings are pent-up consumption, which ultimately does not serve to build up financial assets, households often simply left the funds in the current account," writes the DZ Bank in an analysis.

With the loosening, that has subsided a bit.

At 15 percent, the savings rate was still quite high in 2021.

In any case, there can be no talk of “extraordinarily low savings” for the past year, says Michael Holstein, chief economist at DZ Bank.

In previous years before the pandemic, the German savings rate was mostly around 10 percent.

That was always a lot compared to some other countries.

At the end of 2021, it was at least approaching this value again, at 10.7 percent in the third quarter and 11.4 percent in the fourth quarter.

The fact that people were able to shop more again and that skiing holidays were possible again may have played a role here.

But the rise in prices, particularly for energy, is also likely to have weighed more heavily on household budgets towards the end of the year.

The negative interest thing

However, there may have been additional reasons for the lower inflows to German overnight, giro and time deposit accounts.

After all, not everyone who saves has to do it in a bank account.

The study did not examine this in detail.

However, the authors believe that the low interest rate level probably also played a role.

After all, last year banks increasingly charged negative interest, even for small amounts.

According to surveys, this has led to more people storing cash at home.

Above all, however, there was a boost in the investments of private individuals in shares during the pandemic.

As the extremely low-interest phase lasted longer, more and more citizens reacted with an adjusted investment behavior, writes the DZ Bank.

Many newcomers to the securities business, especially young investors.

In the period from September 2019 to September 2021 alone, the number of custody accounts grew by 3.9 million to 27.1 million.

The accumulation of financial assets in the form of shares in 2020, at 46.6 billion euros, was three times what was newly invested on average in previous years.

Although direct investments in shares fell again in 2021 in view of the high price levels, a “boom” in funds set in.

"The new crisis - the attack by Russia and the far-reaching economic sanctions - are fueling the already high inflation and further aggravating the situation for consumers," said Katharina Lüth von Raisin: "In this uncertain situation, it is all the more advisable for savers to be prudent act: avoiding negative interest rates and balancing out inflation as much as possible are central points in order to protect the value of one’s own savings.”