“The strategic realignment is having an effect,” says Kumpfmüller. The net profit for the year has more than tripled. And this is not only due to the reversal of risk provisions. The newly agreed volume of financing in residential construction increased by 38 percent to around 800 million euros, and loans of over 200 million euros were concluded in privately financed private residential construction (up 22 percent). This has enabled 1,000 families to dream of owning their own home, says the Hypo boss
For Hypo, which describes itself as the “number one housing bank”, the planned ordinance for the granting of housing loans with stricter regulations in terms of the borrower’s equity and term “does not make sense”. The purpose of the regulation, to get real estate prices under control, has not been achieved in other countries, the key figures are too static. “And we create a lot of bureaucracy because the National Bank and the Financial Market Authority (FMA) have to control everything,” says Kumpfmüller, who was the head of the FMA for a long time. Commercial prudence already dictates that the risks involved in lending should be hedged accordingly.
The fact that the bank has mastered this is also shown by the low level of risk provisions of EUR 14.1 million and the below-average indicator for bad loans (not even a fifth of the Austrian average).
Hypo, which has eleven branches (including headquarters) and still employs around 400 people, says it has made significant gains in the service business (e.g. with securities commissions), but also in the new commercial area. The balance sheet total increased by 4.3 percent to 8.16 billion euros, the core capital ratio is 14.4 percent. The cost-income ratio, which compares expenses to income, fell from 77.1 to 61.8 percent, a sign of increasing profitability.
The owners (mainly the state of Upper Austria, a good 40 percent Raiffeisen Landesbank Oberösterreich) will receive a dividend of seven million euros (previous year: three million euros).
Source: Nachrichten
