The Bundesverband deutscher Banken (BdB, also branded as Bankenverband and in English as Association of German Banks) is the representative body of profit-oriented banks in Germany and a key lobby group for Germany's financial sector. The BdB is a member of the German Banking Industry Committee that brings it together with its peers representing the other segments or "pillars" of German banking, namely the BVR for cooperative banks, the DSGV for savings banks, the VÖB mainly for public promotional banks, and VdP for specialized mortgage banks. The BdB is also a member of the European Banking Federation (EBF) together with the VÖB, Germany being the only country represented in the EBF by more than one member.

History

The BdB was founded in 1951 in Cologne as an Eingetragener Verein, succeeding the pre-war Centralverband des deutschen Bank- und Bankiergewerbes (1901-1945), which was based in Berlin. In 1999 it moved back to Berlin, while its the publishing subsidiary Bankverlag remained in Cologne. The association also maintains an office in Brussels.

Membership

The BdB has six categories of members. As of January 2024, these included:

Deposit guarantee schemes

The BdB manages two separate but interrelated deposit guarantee schemes: As of 2024, the EdB insures deposits up to the harmonized European limit of €100,000 per account, in line with the EU Deposit Guarantee Scheme Directive (DGSD). The Einlagensicherungsfonds acts as an additional or "top-up" fund which provides additional deposit guarantee, up to 5 million euro for individuals and 50 million for corporate entities. In 2021, the collapse of Greensill Capital and its German banking arm resulted in an obligation for the BdB deposit insurance to pay out €2.7 billion to more than 20,000 former customers of the bank. Following that event, the BdB decided to reduce its deposit insurance coverage. The levels are planned to be gradually reduced to reach 1 million for individuals and 10 million for corporate entities by 2030.

Auditing Association

The Auditing Association of German Banks (, PdB), established in 1969 in Cologne, is a sister entity to the BdB and is tasked with assessing the risk of each participating BdB member which feeds into the calculation of EdB and ESF deposit guarantee fees. It is led by a 3-members management board. The membership of the Prüfungsverband largely overlaps with that of the Bankenverband: as of early 2024, it included all Grossbanken and Privatbanken, all Regionalbanken except Westend Bank in Frankfurt, and nearly half of the Auslandsbanken.

Leadership

The BdB is led by an executive board or Vorstand. The three large banks (Grossbanken, namely Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, and Hypovereinsbank) each nominate one member; the small privately owned banks (Privatbankiers) collectively have two seats; the second-tier commercial banks known as regional banks have four seats; and the foreign banks (other than Italian-owned Hypovereinsbank) have one seat. Ex officio, the General Manager of the BdB is also a member of the Vorstand. The board elects a President along with two alternates, which together form the Präsidium. By tradition, the President role should be held alternating between the big banks and the other members of private and regional banks, but that rule is not followed strictly. The daily business is led by the collective Management Board, which is led by the General Manager.

Presidents

General Managers

Controversy

From 2016 until 2017, a parliamentary fact-finding committee probed BdB’s potential involvement in tax fraud involving multi-billion-euro trades to get bogus tax reclaims, following the revelations by the CumEx Files; however, the probe proved unable to access emails and documents from BdB. In 2020, public prosecutors on raided the Berlin and Frankfurt offices of BdB as part of a similar investigation.