Mercedes-Benz Bank continues to grow and set new records. Buoyed by the successful sales at Daimler, the bank increased its new business by 8 percent in 2015, to the record value of €10.7 billion. As a result, the automotive bank now has a total of 812,144 cars, vans, trucks, and buses worth €19.8 billion on its books. The biggest growth drivers are the fleet management business, which saw a 20 percent increase in company car leasing, and the financing of pre-owned vehicles for private customers, which rose by 10 percent. The bank continued to grow rapidly in January and February 2016, when it boosted the volume of its new business by 16 percent.
This growth is also having a positive impact on the company’s market presence. In fact, more than one out of two Daimler vehicles registered in Germany today is on the road thanks to financial services from Mercedes-Benz Bank. At the same time, the bank is benefiting from historically low credit risks, because the customers’ payment behavior is better than ever before. All of these factors enabled Mercedes-Benz Bank to make a significant contribution in 2015 to the operating profit (EBIT) of Daimler Financial Services, which amounted to €1.6 billion worldwide (+17%). The bank’s return on equity was above the target value of 17 percent. In the direct banking business, the volume of deposits amounted to €10.4 billion (-3%), which was within the target range. To refinance its operations, the bank once again sold around €1 billion of asset-backed securities (ABS) in the market at favorable terms. Together with the deposit banking business, the ABS provide the bank with a very sound refinancing basis.
“We expect continuous profitable growth in 2016 and are focusing on the digitization of our products and the interfaces to the customers,” says Franz Reiner, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Bank and the Board member responsible for the Europe region at Daimler Financial Services. “We added 236 employees to our team last year in order to prepare ourselves for further growth.”
The banks’ employees can celebrate not only these business developments, but also the fact that they have the best jobs in all of Baden-Württemberg and Berlin-Brandenburg, according to a study published in February by the independent Great Place to Work Institute. The bank’s commercial customer service center is located in the Berlin-Brandenburg region.
In the future, Mercedes-Benz Bank plans to further digitize its customer interfaces so that customers can conveniently and digitally manage and call up all of their mobility-related information and services. Through the integration of financial services into the customer portal “Mercedes me”, Mercedes-Benz Bank is playing an important role in Daimler’s transformation from an automaker into a provider of mobility services. Moreover, the automotive bank is bundling the Groups’ mobility services in order to offer them to customers for a single monthly sum. Thanks to the progress being made with the telematics systems in Daimler vehicles, the bank will in the future also offer leasing and motor insurance products for which payments will be use-dependent. These monthly payments will consist of a fixed amount as well as a variable component that will depend on the driver’s driving behaviour and the distance travelled.
