Helaba establishes holding company for digital start-ups

Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen is estab­lishing a holding company – Helaba Digital GmbH & Co. KG – to invest in digital start-ups. The aim of Helaba Digital will be to make strategic invest­ments in innovative companies that will actively complement and develop the Helaba Group’s business model with their digital solutions as well as contribute to optimising the bank’s core processes. “The estab­lishment of Helaba Digital means we are consis­tently moving forward with our digital agenda at Helaba”, stresses Thomas Groß, Vice-Chairman of Helaba’s Board of Managing Directors. “We are convinced that, together with our customers, we can benefit from the numerous innovations on the market.”

Helaba’s activities are mainly focused on the segments of commercial real estate finance, wholesale banking, business with savings banks (S-Group) and cash management. Therefore, the new holding company will concen­trate on companies that are propelling the digital trans­formation in the areas of financial services (FinTechs), regulation (RegTechs) and real estate (PropTechs). “Our investments will be based on mutual co-operation”, explain the two managing directors of Helaba Digital, Lucie Haß and Philipp Kaiser. “We want to develop our business in partner­ship with the start-ups. In addition to providing finance, we will give them access to our experts and customer groups and share the experience that the bank’s relevant business units have amassed.” The primary intention is to make invest­ments during the later stage of a company’s growth, but invest­ments at the early stage have not been ruled out.

The holding company will com­plement Helaba’s digital activities. The bank has already taken a stake in the Capnamic fund and is helping to expand Frankfurt’s start-up ecosystem as a platinum sponsor of the Tech Quartier.