Frankfurt / Main (dpa) – The savings banks in Hesse and Thuringia are likely to have made less profit in 2020. One reason: During the Corona crisis, the institutes saved considerably more money for possible loan defaults than a year earlier. Today, Monday, the Sparkassen- und Giroverband Hessen-Thüringen reports on the business development of the 49 savings banks in Hesse and Thuringia.
In mid-September the association had forecast for the year as a whole that the operating result before valuation – that is, the operating result – was expected to be “significantly lower than in the previous year”. A value of around 760 million euros was calculated at the time, 17 percent less than a year earlier (916.2 million euros). After taxes, the public institutions in the two federal states had earned a total of 241.7 million euros in 2019.
The entire industry is gearing up for the fact that more borrowers can no longer pay their installments as a result of the pandemic. “There will certainly be more loan defaults at banks and savings banks in the coming period, including ours,” Gerhard Grandke, the managing president of the savings banks and giro association Hesse-Thuringia, said in mid-September. The regionally rooted savings banks were in great demand as lenders for companies during the pandemic.
