For a brief moment, Stefan Wintels got personal.

The year 2022 was an “exceptional year” for KfW Bankengruppe, for all 8,000 employees, but also for himself, said Wintels on Tuesday in Frankfurt.

He had personally reached his limits, "and I may have exceeded them at one point or another".

In the words of Wintels, who has been CEO of the company since November 2021, one could read the tour de force that KfW has put behind it.

Since the outbreak of the corona pandemic in spring 2020, the bank, which has its headquarters in Frankfurt's Palmengarten, has been a bank in permanent crisis mode.

At that time, the good state development bank became the emergency helper for companies in trouble.

The responsibility was and is great, because since then a central goal of KfW has been

Daniel Schleidt

Coordinator of the economics department in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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This has very special consequences for the headquarters in Frankfurt.

Almost half of the 8,000 or so employees in the employ of KfW are based here – before Corona, the company employed 6,500 men and women.

Behind this lies a growth that is due to the tasks that have been assigned to KfW since 2020.

The enormous amounts of funding that the bank has issued on behalf of the state since 2020 show the dimensions in which the company, founded in November 1948 as a credit institution for the reconstruction of the country after the Second World War, has now moved.

According to Wintels, KfW has provided 67 billion euros in corona aid alone in just over two years.

By way of comparison: for the entire reconstruction of the East there are 82.5 billion euros in the books of the banking group for the decade between 1990 and 2000,

the special program as a result of the 2008 financial crisis comprised around 14 billion euros.

Since the middle of last year, however, the Corona Aid chapter has been closed for the time being, no further loans have been applied for, "that's good news".

Achieved a lot in times of crisis

But peace has not yet returned to Frankfurt's Westend, as a look at the 2022 financial year shows, in which the record amount of 166.9 billion euros in funding was approved, after 82.9 billion in the previous year.

In 2022, KfW contributed EUR 58.8 billion to securing Germany's energy supply by supporting companies whose business models were in danger of collapsing due to the sharp rise in electricity, gas and oil prices.

Part of the money is likely to have flowed into the gas importer Uniper, which KfW took over at the behest of the federal government at the end of the year.

Wintels knows that he has expected a lot from his employees over the past few months.

After all, how is a bank supposed to manage overnight special programs such as corona and energy aid in addition to the classic promotional business without reaching its own limits?

In day-to-day business, medium-sized companies receive grants and loans, real estate owners are granted subsidies for energy-related renovations, educational and environmental projects are supported, as are investment projects in developing countries.

This includes loans for the insulation of a residential building, participation in promising start-ups and loans for vegetable and fruit producers in Peru.

The increase in employees indicates that KfW acted quickly to meet the demands of its boss, who says: "If we are entrusted with special tasks, we want to make the contribution that is necessary." Kreditanstalt has taken on several restructuring projects in recent months in order to prepare the organization for the wave of tasks.

In Germany - in addition to the Frankfurt headquarters, Berlin is the second major headquarters of KfW, where the company employs around 2,500 people - many employees have just experienced an enormous change.

After all, every new program and every special task means that there is a shift of chairs internally, especially when things have to go as quickly as in the case of the Corona and energy aid.

As recognition, the employees received an additional inflation bonus of up to 3,000 euros with their November salary, and that in full, with the exception of the board of directors.

KfW is to receive a new profile

In the past, KfW usually rented offices or entire locations when recruiting new employees, but this is currently not part of the strategy.

According to a spokesman, the increase in employees does not bring the office capacities to their limits thanks to mobile work.

KfW allows its employees to spend up to 40 percent of their working hours in the home office and has therefore recently even given up office space in the four-digit range in Frankfurt.

The change in the group is probably still necessary, because Wintels wants to give KfW a new profile, at least in part.

In this way, the development bank should also develop into a transformation bank.

The German economy is undergoing major change, companies and real estate must become more sustainable, and business models more digital.

All of this requires huge investments, which are necessary to keep the German economy competitive.

According to Wintels, 2022 was a year of crisis management.

The current year should drive the structural change, and KfW wants to make its contribution.

A funding year like 2022 will probably not be repeated, according to Wintels.

But the tasks are not getting much smaller.