Compared to its main competitor Union Investment, Deka's business is currently doing better.

In the first half of 2022, the savings bank fund company sold funds and certificates for a net amount of 14.3 billion euros, while the fund company of the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken sold funds for 9.6 billion euros.

But Deka's business has also slowed down significantly in recent weeks, as can be seen from the half-year figures published on Thursday.

Hanno Mussler

Editor in Business.

  • Follow I follow

In mid-July, Deka CEO Georg Stocker assumed that the savings bank fund company sold more than 15 billion euros in funds and certificates in the first half of the year.

However, the uncertainty resulting from the war, inflation, especially with energy prices rising sharply and the price losses on the stock markets in June, apparently kept many Sparkasse customers from making new investments.

The President of the Savings Banks Association and Deka Supervisory Board Chairman Helmut Schleweis has already warned that up to 60 percent of Germans will soon have to use their entire income for subsistence and there will be no money left over to save.

However, Deka customers are still at least sticking to the monthly payments into securities savings plans.

In the first half of the year, they even concluded 280,000 new contracts, so that Deka now has over 7,

Profit almost tripled

From a business point of view, things are going well anyway - here Deka is clearly worried about being labeled as a winner of the crisis.

The Management Board warns that the economic result, which has almost tripled to EUR 971 million (previous year: EUR 343 million), is being distorted by positive special effects.

Without valuation effects, the economic result would have been only 556 million euros, if he calculates his own result as small.

Specifically, the rise in interest rates in the first half of the year, which also raised the discount rate for pensions from 1.15 to 3.45 percent, led to actuarial gains of EUR 160 million.

In the certificates business, Deka benefited even more from widened risk premiums (credit spreads).

Since Deka values ​​its own issues in the trading book at the current market price (“fair value”), there was a profit contribution of EUR 310 million.

This amount could shrink again in the second half of the year – but to a maximum of zero.

A slide into the negative due to credit spreads for the year as a whole is ruled out, they say.

The Management Board expects at least a small profit to be made in the second half of 2022.

After an economic result of 971 million euros in the first half of the year, the result of 2021 of 848 million euros should be exceeded in 2022 - at least if the risk situation remains relaxed.

Despite the risk of recession, Deka was able to release previously made provisions for loan defaults in hotel and retail properties and aircraft in the first half of 2022.

47.7 million euros benefited the half-year profit.