German banks have once again slightly eased their credit standards for loans to enterprises and loans to households for house purchase. These are, in a nutshell, the results of the Bank Lending Survey (BLS) in Germany, which the Bundesbank conducts four times a year.

At the end of the second quarter of 2018, the financial assets of households in Germany stood at €5,997 billion. Compared with the first quarter of 2018, this represents an increase of €80 billion or 1.4%. Investors continued to favour liquid investments as well as forms of investment that are perceived to be low risk – with inflows of €43 billion, currency and deposits saw the largest gains, and claims on insurance corporations also recorded significant inflows amounting to €18 billion.

Germany’s net external position stood at €1,771 billion at the end of 2017, thus amounting to around 54% of nominal gross domestic product.

The results of the payments statistics for 2017 show that payments are becoming more digital and are increasingly made within Europe. More than 21 billion non-cash payments were made in Germany last year – around 3% more than the year before. These payments were executed on approximately 103 million current accounts. The average balance on these accounts thus rose by almost 12% to around €13,000.

Dr Sabine Mauderer and Burkhard Balz took up office as members of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank on Monday. The Bundesbank's Executive Board has therefore reshuffled its areas of responsibility.

Deutsche Börse and the Bundesbank are jointly exploring ways to employ blockchain technology in securities settlement. They unveiled a new prototype in Frankfurt am Main.

The consultation of the Deutsche Bundesbank's Executive Board pursuant to section 7 (3) of the Bundesbank Act regarding the nomination of Dr Sabine Mauderer as a member of the Deutsche Bundesbank's Executive Board took place on Tuesday.

The President of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann, visited the Czech National Bank yesterday. The main topics of his informal meeting with CNB Governor Jiří Rusnok and other members of the Board were the view of the Czech economy from outside and the situation of the German economy. The future of the euro area and the banking union were also discussed.

In the first half of 2018, the Bundesbank recorded approximately 31,100 counterfeit euro banknotes with a nominal value of €1.8 million. The number of counterfeits fell by 6.2 % compared with the second half of 2017. Statistically, this equates to around seven counterfeit banknotes for every 10,000 inhabitants per year

The banks repeatedly eased their credit standards and terms and conditions in all three surveyed loan categories. They again adapted credit terms and conditions mainly by narrowing margins irrespective of borrowers’ creditworthiness, albeit to a smaller extent than in the preceding quarter. Demand for loans to enterprises and loans to households for house purchase picked up considerably, with demand for consumer credit and other lending in fact rising sharply.

The financial assets of households in Germany stood at €5,875 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2018. Compared with the fourth quarter of 2017, this represents just a moderate increase of €14 billion, or 0.2%. In the first quarter, claims on insurance corporations grew in particular (€22 billion), followed by currency and deposits, which saw inflows totalling just under €15 billion.

Germany's economic boom will continue. The already high level of capacity utilisation in the economy will increase up until 2020, although growth is unlikely to be quite as strong as in 2017. Growth in exports and business investment will be less strong.

The consolidation process in the German banking sector continued in 2017. Over the course of the year, the overall number of credit institutions fell by 65 to 1,823. This corresponds to a 3.4% decline compared with a drop of 3.7% in 2016.

Germany’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks grew at a significantly slower rate in 2016 than they did one year earlier on account of smaller positive exchange rate effects as well as a lower volume of new equity investments. Inward FDI in Germany expanded at just a subdued pace, much as it had done in the previous years.

In the first quarter of 2018, German credit institutions eased their credit standards in all three loan categories. This is revealed by the latest Bank Lending Survey (BLS) conducted among banks domiciled in Germany.

At the end of 2017, German households’ financial assets amounted to €5,857 billion, up by €78 billion, or 1.4%, on the third quarter of the year.

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The Bundesbank posted a profit of €2.0 billion for the 2017 financial year, compared with €1.0 billion one year earlier. Following an allocation to the reserves, the remaining distributable profit of €1.9 billion (previous year: €0.4 billion) was transferred in full today to the Federal Government pursuant to section 27 number 2 of the Bundesbank Act (Bundesbankgesetz).

In 2017, the Bundesbank registered approximately 73,000 counterfeit euro banknotes with a nominal value of €4.1 million, which represents an 11% decrease year on year. Statistically, this equates to nine counterfeit banknotes per 10,000 inhabitants.

German banks adjusted their lending policies in the fourth quarter of 2017, chiefly with regard to credit terms and conditions, according to the Eurosystem’s latest Bank Lending Survey (BLS) among banks domiciled in Germany.

At the end of the third quarter of 2016, households' financial assets amounted to €5,478 billion; this figure was up by a considerable €76 billion (or 1.4%) from the second quarter of 2016.