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Hanover (dpa / lni) - Against the background of the Corona crisis, the number of approved funding applications at the state-owned investment and development bank of Lower Saxony, the NBank, has increased almost tenfold this year.

The funding amount almost tripled.

“At the end of the year, the NBank should have approved and paid out around 185,000 applications for corona aid in the various corona-related funding offers.

In “normal” years there are an average of 20,000 applications, ”said CEO Michael Kiesewetter of the German Press Agency.

The total funding amount as of December 10th was 2.75 billion euros (2019: 928.5 million euros).

Broken down into loans and grants, the following figures were obtained in 2020 (each December 10th).

Without the Corona aid programs, grants totaling EUR 572.7 million were approved and paid out in 22,600 cases and loans totaling EUR 418.6 million in 426 cases.

As part of the Corona aid programs, the NBank approved 150,700 applications for grants totaling EUR 1.3 billion and 10,817 loans totaling EUR 441.6 million.

"With every single funding measure we have helped to enable people and companies in Lower Saxony to at least partially offset the economic consequences of the corona pandemic," emphasized Kiesewetter.

"I am assuming that the NBank's funding focus will be determined for a long time by funding resulting from the consequences of the corona pandemic."

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In the case of Corona aid, emergency aid from the state and federal government was in first place with 139,200 grants over 907.6 million euros, followed by liquidity loans and Lower Saxony quick loans with 10,800 loans totaling 434.5 million euros.

8,750 grants with a total volume of 104.9 million euros were paid out to bridging aid for companies.

According to the information, the bank launched around 50 new corona-specific financial products in the last six months alone.

This is a very unusual and high number, even for the beginning of a funding period.

In order to cope with the flood of applications, 500 employees were busy processing corona aid in the NBank at peak times.

According to the bank, this resulted in 60,000 overtime hours, particularly in the first few months.

At its peak, the telephone hotline received 2500 calls a day.

According to Kiesewetter, the employees did an excellent job with “enormous commitment and a lot of passion”.

NBank