Despite the effects of the corona pandemic, Kreissparkasse München Starnberg Ebersberg draws a positive balance for the 2021 financial year and can record growth in the most important business areas. In addition, the bank announced on Wednesday that digitization is also being pushed ahead due to changing customer requirements. However, this also has an impact on the branch structure of the money house: At the beginning of last year, the district savings bank announced that it would close almost every fourth branch in all three districts and only rely on an offer from machines there. Five branches in the Munich district were affected. For the year 2021, despite Corona, the money house is showing a significant increase in customer business volume of almost twelve percent – this includes customer deposits, customer loans and securities in customer custody accounts. At the end of 2021, the total volume was 27 billion euros; 2.8 billion more than the year before. The savings bank recorded an increase in customer deposits of 4.7 percent to around eleven billion euros, around 90 percent of which are short-term investments in customer accounts, according to the money house. “In view of the low interest rates, our customers continue to show little interest in investing their money for the long term,” states Andreas Frühschütz, CEO of the Kreissparkasse. A significant increase of around eight percent to ten billion euros was also recorded in the loan portfolio. According to Frühschütz, his bank is doing everything it can to continue making investments in the region possible at a high level, so that the district savings bank is fulfilling its public mandate.
The most important source of income for the Kreissparkasse is still the interest margin. However, as a result of the persistent zero or negative interest rates, this fell again by around six million euros to 167 million euros in 2021. The good growth in the lending business prevented a further slump. On the other hand, the commission result was positive with an increase of around ten percent to 59 million euros, according to the money house.
The situation regarding personnel and material costs is described as stable. This was made possible by “undiminished cost discipline” and postponed investments. A little more than a thousand employees work full-time at the Kreissparkasse, including 75 trainees. The financial institution intends to continue to advance digitization in the future. The corona pandemic has shown how important this is in customer advice. “Customer expectations have continued to change over the past two years,” says the balance sheet. This is one of the reasons why the Sparkasse introduced video advice for customers across the board in April, which is available to all customers with a personal advisor as a further option – in addition to advice on site or on the phone.
A total of 1.2 million euros in donations were collected via the non-profit foundation of the bank, which will benefit a wide variety of initiatives, facilities and sports clubs. There will be another personnel change at the top of the Kreissparkasse München Starnberg Ebersberg this year: After 22 years on the board, Peter Waßmann will retire in September, and Ulrich Sengle will take his place from the Kreis- und Stadtsparkasse Erding-Dorfen.