Sparkassengruppe Österreich
Savings banks network in Austria / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sparkassengruppe Österreich (lit. 'Austrian Savings Bank Group') brings together all savings banks (German: Sparkassen) in Austria. Tracing its origins to 1819, it serves around 4 million customers in 797 branches with more than 15,500 employees, with a customer share in Austria around 31.2% as of December 2022. The group has a complex decentralized structure but relies critically on Erste Group Bank AG, which owns the main local savings bank in Vienna, operates central functions, owns and manages subsidiaries outside of Austria, and consolidates group accounts.[1] The Österreichischer Sparkassenverband acts as the group's national representative body.
In 2020 the group had total assets of €277 billion, ahead of Raiffeisen Bank International (€166 billion), UniCredit Bank Austria (€119 billion), and BAWAG Group (€53 billion), making it the largest Austrian banking group.[2]: 3 Since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, the entire Sparkassengruppe Österreich has been directly supervised by the European Central Bank, with Erste Group Bank AG as a consolidating entity.[3][4]
The latter feature stands in contrast to Germany, where the Sparkassen are supervised individually as separate entities even though they are joined in an institutional protection scheme. Another difference is that the German Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe has no significant foreign operations, whereas Erste Group Bank AG has significant subsidiaries in Central and Eastern Europe.