Our way forward

Our aspiration

Aareal Bank Group intends to be the leading provider of smart financing, software products and digital solutions for the property sector and related industries.

“Aareal 2020” aims to establish structures and processes that allow us not only to keep pace with the growing and rapidly changing requirements, but to shape (“Adjust”) the changes, further develop the portfolio of services while consistently focusing on our clients, by developing (“Advance”) new markets and client groups – and hence creating new revenue potential – and creating values for our clients, investors and employees in the future, too (“Achieve”).

We successfully continued to implement our “Aareal 2020” programme for the future during the year under review, and have already reached important milestones in this respect:

1. In the Structured Property Financing segment, the North American portfolio was extended significantly, the non-core portfolio was reduced, new syndication partners were acquired, and we made advances in the procedure of digitalising the internal processes and the client interfaces, as planned. In the years ahead, we intend to expand even more into attractive markets, enhance balance sheet flexibility and tap new digital business opportunities along the value creation chain.

2. A series of growth initiatives was launched in the Consulting/Services segment, such as the cross-selling of digital products in Europe through Aareon, the development and migration to modern ERP solutions, establishing digital platforms and marketing new digital products, gaining entry to the utilities sector via IT interfaces and cooperations with start-ups. We will focus in the years ahead on enlarging the housing industry and utilities ecosystem, developing existing platform products for the housing enterprises’ B2C business, as well as expanding the range of payments and IT products, and the client base.

3. We have also made great advances in further developing our organisational structures and processes, including for example, making Group structures more efficient, investing in a new IT landscape and initiating a comprehensive process of cultural change. We have optimised our deposit mix, and already anticipated regulatory aspects at an early stage. Our objective is to further enhance our flexibility and efficiency, reduce complexity, and increasingly digitalise our processes within the scope of an optimised IT landscape. We are also targeting a balanced capital structure and preserving our broadly-diversified funding base.