Just as a reminder, net interest income in 2016 was far and away the largest source of income among German institutions, accounting for 73.2% – and this despite a year-on-year fall of nearly five percentage points.
It is therefore hardly surprising that our recently published low-interest-rate survey reveals a massive worsening of the earnings situation – both in the planning scenarios of banks and savings banks and in the scenarios of stable interest rates predefined in our survey. In addition to the interest rate level, the asset purchase programme of the ECB is also an issue.