A delicate little plant that needs a lot of care, but is slowly taking root - in the minds of Germans, securities investments seem to be slowly arriving and staying as a real alternative.

At least that is the assessment of Georg Stocker, the CEO of Dekabank.

His view is based on the figures presented by the Sparkassen securities house at its annual press conference on Tuesday.

In 2021, Savings Bank customers concluded around 1.07 million security savings plans with Deka.

In the previous year it was 776,000.

It thus managed a total of around 6.9 million contracts at the end of the year under review.

Gregory Bruner

Editor in Business.

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The renewed love for the capital market brought Deka a net sales performance of 35.7 billion euros.

EUR 25 billion of this was attributable to private customers, who invested EUR 7.8 billion in equity funds, EUR 2.8 billion in bond funds and EUR 7.1 billion in certificates.

"Regardless of which government sits in Berlin, pensions will not explode," estimates Stocker.

Therefore, private provision is essential.

Inflation also provides strong arguments to invest more in real assets.

In the institutional business, sales performance fell from 19.5 billion euros in 2020 to 10.7 billion euros.

However, this is due to the loss of an individual mandate in the higher single-digit billions.

If you calculate this out, you would also see growth here, according to the board.

Overall, the Deka Group managed 395.1 billion euros at the end of 2021, 56 billion more than in the previous year.

Strong commission income supports earnings

The strong growth in assets under management also led to a 45.5 percent increase in income to around EUR 2.02 billion.

The commission result of EUR 1.62 billion made a significant contribution to this.

In 2020, 1.31 billion euros were still achieved here.

A balanced risk provisioning balance had a positive effect.

While 178 million euros were set aside for risks in 2020, Deka withdrew 0.6 million euros from its reserves in 2021.

Deka's financial result totaled EUR 140 million, EUR 25 million less than in the previous year.

The trading book stocks had produced an impressive financial result of 267 million euros.

However, the lower result from banking book stocks of minus 127 million euros pulled the balance down overall.

Deka's expenses increased slightly.

They had to spend 4.8 percent more last year.

Investments in digitization, sustainability and the expansion of the business model as well as a 17 percent increase in the bank levy were the drivers here.

Due to the sharp rise in income, the cost/income ratio was reduced by almost 12 percentage points to 58.2 percent.

The reported return on equity before taxes rose to 16.5 percent.

It was increased by 11 percentage points compared to the previous year.

Deka's economic result ultimately amounted to 848 million euros - the best result since 2010, when 920 million euros were reported.

In 2020, the result was 269 million euros due to the pandemic.

But even in the pre-crisis year of 2019, Deka only earned about half.

Because of the war in Ukraine, Deka expects earnings to fall to 550 million euros in 2022. Although this does not come close to the result of the exceptional year 2021, the forecast is above the average of the past five years due to the good business development.