The savings banks in Hesse-Thuringia advocate for a single central bank of the savings banks finance group.

As long as there is resistance, especially from the Baden-Württemberg and East German savings banks, cooperation is also a good step, said Stefan Reuss, who took over from Gerald Grandke as regional savings bank association president and chairman of the board of Helaba at the beginning of the year.

Hanno Mussler

Editor in Business.

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At the end of 2021, Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba) had agreed with Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) that they would discontinue interest rate, currency and commodity management for savings banks and the custodian business for special and retail funds and instead offer their customers the offers recommended by LBBW.

In return, the two state banks agreed that LBBW would broker its physical currency and precious metals business to Helaba by January 2023 and would transfer the documentary foreign business and foreign payment transactions for savings banks and their customers to Helaba.

That is reasonable, Reuss praised the "pragmatic approach".

Other fields of cooperation are being considered.

Teaser

Many Presidents of the German Savings Banks and Giro Association (DSGV) have already bitten their teeth on the subject of mergers among the state banks.

In 2004, for example, Dietrich Hoppenstedt called for mergers and the formation of competence centers.

The current DSGV President Helmut Schleweis proposed a single central bank from all state banks in autumn 2018, and at the beginning of 2020 Helaba and the savings bank fund company Deka then briefly negotiated with each other.

But the savings banks, which are split into regional blocks, and the federal states as co-owners, lack unity.

It is all the more astonishing that the LBBW Management Board and the Helaba Management Board have been looking very objectively for advantages for both banks and the savings banks in recent months.

According to Thomas Wagner, Managing Director of the Savings Banks Association of Hesse-Thuringia, the main advantage of the cooperation agreement is that IT processes only have to be programmed once.

It is unclear whether the state banks have promised the savings banks price reductions.

Finally a turnaround in interest rates

The savings banks are pushing for savings at their central institutes because times are getting rougher for them too.

One of the few bright spots is the rise in interest rates, which in the first half of 2022 caused the interest surplus from interest on loans received and interest on deposits granted to climb by almost 2 percent in the 49 institutes in Hesse-Thuringia.

The growth in deposits of 4 to 8 percent in recent years is probably over, said association president Reuss in the International Club Frankfurt business journalists.

Anyone who saved during the pandemic is now catching up on consumption, for example in the form of vacations.

In addition, people would have to spend significantly more on their daily needs and energy.

"That slows down the savings potential, the inflow of deposits to the savings banks are slowed down," says Reuss.