Deutsche Bank Wins New Business Thanks to Commerzbank Uncertainty

Germany’s Deutsche Bank is reportedly benefitting from uncertainty surrounding a possible takeover of rival Commerzbank.

Commerzbank’s customers are increasingly turning to Deutsche Bank for funding, Jan-Philipp Gillmann, head of Deutsche Bank’s German/European corporate banking division, told attendees at an event at Frankfurt.

This is happening amid reports that Commerzbank is the target of a potential merger with Italy’s UniCredit.

“Customers are calling us,” said Gillmann, whose comments were reported Tuesday (Nov. 26) by Bloomberg News. “Clients are looking at the situation very proactively, because in the end it is about securing liquidity.”

By the same token, Gillman said his bank has in the last 18 months benefited from the merger of UBS Group and Credit Suisse.

“We have gained an extremely large number of customers in Switzerland,” he said.

The Bloomberg report noted that UniCredit had purchased a stake in Commerzbank in September, with CEO Andea Orcel showing enthusiasm for a combination. However, he has since softened his language after a deal to purchase Italian lender Banco BPM.

“Commerzbank is going to remain an important investment,” Orcel said on Monday.

In other banking news, PYMNTS spoke last week with Eric Lee, vice president of product at Amount, about the gap between how banks and other financial institutions (FIs) perceive their digital lending experiences and how those offerings are viewed by consumers.

As Lee put it, “there seems to be a disconnect between how FIs see their digital readiness and what the actual readiness looks like.”

Digital lending readiness, he told PYMNTS, involves the FIs’ technical and operational capabilities that let banks evaluate prospective borrowers, offer financial products in a risk-appropriate way and process loans.

While there’s a range of readiness in terms of the size of the FI, they all face similar challenges in attracting new customers and deposits, as well as regulatory challenges, and the complexities inherent in collecting, maintaining and using customer-level data.

“Many of these FIs are looking for external help,” Lee said.

Joint PYMNTS Intelligence/Amount research has found that while most FIs would rate their digital lending processes as good or even excellent, just 25% of banks can actually fulfill same-day processing of loans from application to disbursement of the funds.

The research also showed that only around 36% of financial institutions depend on their digital platforms for more than half of their lending activity.