Digital property financing: banks could catch up with online portals

Munich, July 21st, 2021 – Property financing is meanwhile the largest credit category for German banks. It is a 1.3 trillion euro market with record growth of almost 7% last year. For 58% of property buyers today, financing in the branch of their house bank is the first choice; 28% would like a combination of a bank office and an online offer from the bank. For financing customers with a digital affinity, this proportion even increases from 28% to 37%. This is the result of the study “Digital property financing ” carried out in June 2021. The representative study was carried out by the research institute bbw Marketing on behalf of afb Application Services AG, which specialises in the digitisation of financing processes.

The positive attitude of customers with a digital affinity towards their banks that emerged from the study is surprising when you consider the unbraked growth of online comparison portals: every third request is today made via the large online portals. Philipp Oberleitner, member of the board of afb Application Services AG explains: „The banks themselves have enabled the portals to achieve their triumphant advance so far. In order to attract digital customers, they have joined a number of online platforms. The many short-term advantages of a connection also entail the risk for banks of giving up customer trust built up over decades to online brokers in no time at all and becoming pure processing banks without customer access."

If a bank wants to serve the needs of digitally savvy customers without depending on portals, it has to upgrade its IT so that it offers the option of signing a digital loan agreement. If you consider that this is nowadays possible in a manageable time and cost framework and if you add the customer preference in favor of the house bank that emerged from the study, the banks have all the cards in hand to catch up with the lead of the online portals. Oberleitner continues: "We know from our customer environment that more and more banks are working on their own digital application process – regardless of whether they want to remain connected to a portal or not."

The study (only in German) can be downloaded free of charge here: download now

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