With his new strategy, Germany boss Diederichs wants to move up from eighth to fifth place in Germany by 2025.
(Photo: Reuters)
Frankfurt Despite fears of recession, the energy crisis and inflation, the major French bank BNP Paribas wants to increase its income from its German business to EUR 2.8 billion in the coming years. That would correspond to average annual growth of around six percent, calculated Germany boss Lutz Diederichs.
This would mean that the pace of growth would slow down compared to previous years. From 2016 to 2021, BNP in Germany grew by an annual average of 8.2 percent, according to the company.
According to the calculations of the French money house, this would be the strongest growth of all major banks active in Germany. According to this, the largest domestic money house, Deutsche Bank, lost around 1.3 percent of its income in Germany business in the same period.
For 2021, BNP reported revenues of 2.2 billion euros in its German business. The German subsidiary of the largest money house in the euro zone does not provide any information on profitability.
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With its new strategy, Diederichs wants to move up from eighth place in German business to fifth place by 2025. Then only Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, DZ-Bank and Hypo-Vereinsbank would be ahead of the French.
With his new strategy, the BNP Germany boss wants his bank to move up from eighth to fifth place.
(Photo: Marc-Steffen Unger for Handelsblatt)
The Dutch company ING is currently in fifth place, followed by the Bayerische Landesbank and the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg. BNP defines the German business as all activities with domestic customers within Germany.
New customer group: Low earners without bank details
A new customer group should also contribute to achieving the growth targets. Diederichs announced that BNP intends to enter the business with German low earners in the coming year, who often do not have a traditional bank account. As an example, the banker cited seasonal workers who often receive their wages in cash.
BNP wants to enable these people to deposit, withdraw and transfer cash. The offer will run through the BNP subsidiary Nickel.
In France, the bank has already gained 1.5 million customers with this concept, explained Diederichs. The banker sees similar potential in Germany.
The concept envisages that Nickel will offer its services in thousands of lottery acceptance points in Germany. To this end, the French are cooperating with Ilo-Profit GmbH, a subsidiary of several state lottery companies.
Future customers should be able to open an account directly at a lottery acceptance point and receive a debit card and a German IBAN. This form of account opening should be accessible to every customer, regardless of income, nationality or banking history.
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