KfW: Landesbank Baden-Württemberg the first institution in the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe to participate in the new “On-lending Online 2.0” promotional funding platform

• Automated assessment of eligibility for promotion and loan commitment at the push of a button for KfW’s housing sector products
• Clients benefit from faster and easier access to promotion

FRANKFURT, 17-7-2015 — /EuropaWire/ — Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) has become the first institution in the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe (Savings Banks Finance Group) to participate in the new “On-lending Online 2.0” (“Bankdurchleitung Online 2.0”, BDO) promotional funding platform. This means that initially savings bank clients in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, to be joined by those in Baden-Württemberg and Saxony at some point in the third quarter, will have much faster and easier access to promotional loans from KfW. Other major banks in the Savings Banks Finance Group and the savings banks connected to them will be added successively as the year progresses.

Clients can obtain binding information on whether they are eligible for including a KfW promotional loan in their construction financing plans immediately during a consultation at their savings bank branch. Automated assessment and decision-making systems allow a promotional loan to be approved in the space of a few minutes.

LBBW is one of the pilot partners who started working with KfW at the end of 2012 on a project to set up an entirely web-based application and approval process for promotional loans under the name “Bankdurchleitung Online 2.0”. The other initiators of the project are the other major banks in the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe as well as the Genossenschaftliche Finanzgruppe (Cooperative Banks Finance Group), Deutsche Bank and Postbank. Implementing the digital promotional funding platform requires extensive technical and structural changes, at both KfW and its financing partners. The number of KfW’s financing partners making use of the BDO construction finance platform has been growing steadily since May 2014.

“By implementing accelerated BDO approvals in our ‘FGCenter’ software, we are further improving the technical and sales-related conditions for the promotional loan business for savings banks in our core markets. We will also continue to consistently pursue this approach in the future in order to support promotional business activities for the benefit of the savings banks,” said Michael Horn, member of LBBW’s Board of Managing Directors.

“We are very happy that LBBW is working with us to make promotional loans more modern, sustainable and customer-friendly,” said Dr Ingrid Hengster, the member of KfW’s Executive Board responsible for the domestic promotional business. According to Dr Hengster, the digital platform offers benefits for everyone involved. “Clients benefit from certainty in their planning at an earlier stage and fast decisions, while LBBW, the savings banks and KfW benefit from efficient, automated processes”.

As part of the expansion phase of the pilot project now launched by LBBW and its associated savings banks, all of KfW’s promotional products relating to the construction and refurbishment of residential buildings can be applied for and approved accordingly using the promotional funding platform. As before, the signing of a promotional loan is contingent on the regular bank’s willingness, as the contracting partner, to assume the counterparty risk. KfW’s promotional products for SMEs and start-ups will also be added to the digital promotional funding platform from mid-2016.

More information can be found at www.kfw.de/bdo.

CONTACT
Christine Volk
Phone +49 69 74 31-38 67
Fax +49 69 74 31-32 66
eMail christine.volk@kfw.de