After making new allocations to reserves, Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank (apoBank) completed the first six months of 2016 with a net profit of €30.4 million, thus exceeding the level of the previous year’s period (30 June 2015: €27.4 million).
Due to the low interest rates, the operating result decreased as expected, to €77.8 million (30 June 2015: €88.2 million). Herbert Pfennig, Spokesman of the Board of Directors of apoBank: "Even in the face of increasing earnings pressure because of the difficult environment, we are continuing to expand our customer business. We see increasing customer numbers and our growing lending business as a sign that our customers trust us and value our advisory expertise," he continued.
Customer numbers rose in the first six months from 397,000 to 406,000, while membership grew to 108,382 (31 December 2015: 107,768 members). apoBank expanded its loan portfolio by €0.7 billion to €28.5 billion. Here, apoBank maintained its leading position in start-up financing in spite of a nationwide drop in the number of start-ups established in the outpatient healthcare market. Pfennig: "We continue to do our utmost to encourage healthcare professionals to set up practices and to lose their reservations." With this in mind, apoBank further expanded its product range for healthcare professionals, most recently by adding the special loan programme 'Exi500'.
In the reporting period, apoBank’s equity situation remained comfortable. The regulatory capital ratios, already at a high level, rose again slightly. The common equity tier 1 ratio rose by 0.8 percentage points to 22.8 percent, the total capital ratio to 26.4% (31 December 2015: 26.1%). Even the adverse scenario of the joint stress test with a (fully loaded) CET1 ratio of 16.9% carried out by the EBA and the ECB resulted in a good outcome for apoBank. This once more makes apoBank one of the best banks among those whose ratios were published by the EBA.