Clas­si­fi­ca­ti­on of GBC AG to Um­welt­Bank AG

Pri­va­te cus­to­mer busi­ness grows stron­gly in the fourth quar­ter

Ac­cor­ding to the la­test press re­lease, Um­welt­Bank AG achie­ved strong growth in its pri­va­te cus­to­mer busi­ness in the fourth quar­ter of 2025. The to­tal num­ber of pri­va­te cus­to­mers rose to 184,000 in the 2025 fi­nan­cial year. Com­pared to the pre­vious year, this re­pres­ents growth of around 29,000 cus­to­mers. With around 23,000 new cus­to­mers, the fourth quar­ter was pri­ma­ri­ly re­spon­si­ble for this in­crease. Alt­hough the num­ber of new cus­to­mers fell short of the ori­gi­nal ex­pec­ta­ti­ons, which had fo­re­cast an in­crease to 210,000 cus­to­mers by the end of the 2025 fi­nan­cial year, the bank was able to meet its am­bi­tious fo­re­cast for re­tail cus­to­mer de­po­sits exact­ly. The­se in­creased si­gni­fi­cant­ly by around €0.8 bil­li­on to the fo­re­cast va­lue of €4.3 bil­li­on (pre­vious year: €3.5 bil­li­on). Here, too, the fourth quar­ter of 2025 was re­spon­si­ble for the ma­jo­ri­ty of the de­po­sit in­flows re­cor­ded for the year as a who­le, with cus­to­mer de­po­sits in­cre­asing by more than €0.4 bil­li­on. The most im­portant dri­ver be­hind the suc­cessful de­ve­lo­p­ment in the fourth quar­ter is li­kely to be the over­night mo­ney cam­paign that has been run­ning sin­ce Oc­to­ber 2025, which gua­ran­tees 3.0% for the first th­ree months. In ad­di­ti­on, the cur­rent ac­count in­tro­du­ced in the se­cond half of 2025 is also li­kely to have con­tri­bu­ted.

For the cur­rent 2026 fi­nan­cial year, Um­welt­Ban­k’s ma­nage­ment ex­pects the po­si­ti­ve de­ve­lo­p­ment in pri­va­te cus­to­mer busi­ness to con­ti­nue and an­ti­ci­pa­tes an in­crease in pri­va­te cus­to­mer de­po­sits to €5.4 bil­li­on. The num­ber of cus­to­mers is ex­pec­ted to rise by around 75,000 to 260,000. In par­ti­cu­lar, cus­to­mer de­po­sits are ex­pec­ted to grow more stron­gly than in the pre­vious sce­na­rio, which had as­su­med an in­crease in cus­to­mer de­po­sits to €5.0 bil­li­on. The com­pa­ny is ge­ne­ral­ly as­sum­ing a hig­her de­po­sit vo­lu­me per cus­to­mer, which is cer­tain­ly due to the po­si­ti­ve de­ve­lo­p­ment in the fourth quar­ter of 2025. As pre­vious­ly com­mu­ni­ca­ted, the pro­ducts in­tro­du­ced in the past fi­nan­cial year (cur­rent ac­count, di­gi­tal in­vest­ment ad­vice, etc.) and the ex­plo­ita­ti­on of cross-sel­ling po­ten­ti­al are ex­pec­ted to con­tri­bu­te to this. In ad­di­ti­on, new cam­paigns could be laun­ched op­por­tu­ni­sti­cal­ly.

As ex­pec­ted, ho­we­ver, cor­po­ra­te ban­king busi­ness de­cli­ned. At around €120 mil­li­on, the vo­lu­me of new lo­ans (Q4 2025: around €47 mil­li­on) was be­low the fo­re­cast of €200 to €250 mil­li­on, which had al­re­a­dy been re­du­ced in the 9‑month fi­gu­res for 2025. Over­all, the out­stan­ding loan vo­lu­me is the­r­e­fo­re li­kely to have de­creased. This de­ve­lo­p­ment was to be ex­pec­ted gi­ven Um­welt­Bank AG’s in­iti­al ca­pi­tal-con­ser­ving ap­proach to new len­ding. Fol­lo­wing the ca­pi­tal in­crease car­ri­ed out in Sep­tem­ber 2025, the com­pa­ny now has a si­gni­fi­cant­ly hig­her ca­pi­tal buf­fer. Ac­cor­ding to preli­mi­na­ry fi­gu­res, the to­tal ca­pi­tal ra­tio as at 31 De­cem­ber 2025 is around 17.0%, which re­pres­ents a com­for­ta­ble buf­fer to the to­tal ca­pi­tal re­qui­re­ment of 15.6%. In its press re­lease, Um­welt­Bank AG rei­te­ra­ted its ex­pec­ta­ti­on that ca­pi­tal re­qui­re­ments are li­kely to be re­du­ced in 2026. In this con­text, the ter­mi­na­ti­on of the spe­cial re­pre­sen­ta­ti­ve ap­poin­ted by BaFin on 14 July 2025 is im­portant, as it is evi­dence of the re­gu­la­to­ry pro­gress that has been made.

In its press re­lease, Um­welt­Ban­k’s ma­nage­ment con­firms both the growth sce­na­rio pre­sen­ted at last ye­ar’s Ca­pi­tal Mar­kets Day and the ear­nings fo­re­cast for 2025. The preli­mi­na­ry fi­gu­res for 2025 and the fo­re­cast for 2026 will be pu­blished on 25 Fe­bru­ary 2026. Un­til then, we are main­tai­ning our fo­re­casts and pri­ce tar­get un­ch­an­ged.

You can down­load the re­se­arch here: 20260119_UmweltBank_Comment_engl

Cont­act for ques­ti­ons:
GBC AG
Hal­der­stra­ße 27
86150 Augs­burg
⁰⁸²¹⁄₂₄₁₁₃₃ 0
research@​gbc-​ag.​de
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Of­fen­le­gung mög­li­cher In­ter­es­sens­kon­flik­te nach § 85 WpHG und Art. 20 MAR Beim oben ana­ly­sier­ten Un­ter­neh­men ist fol­gen­der mög­li­cher In­ter­es­sen­kon­flikt ge­ge­ben: (1,4,5a,6a,7,11); Ei­nen Ka­ta­log mög­li­cher In­ter­es­sen­kon­flik­te fin­den Sie un­ter:
https://​www​.gbc​-ag​.de/​d​e​/​O​f​f​e​n​l​e​g​ung
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Date (time) Com­ple­ti­on: 19.01.2026 (9:12 am)
Date (time) first trans­mis­si­on: 19.01.2026 (11:30 am)