Prod­ucts and ser­vices

Our busi­ness ac­tivi­ties are close­ly inter­twined with the real eco­nomy, with cus­tomer-related busi­ness ac­count­ing for around 60 percent of our total as­sets. This means that, to­gether with our as­socia­ted com­panies and our clients, we are in a position to make a signi­­ficant contri­bu­tion to­wards achiev­ing a more cli­mate-friend­ly world:

• In con­junc­tion with our sub­si­diaries as well as WIBank, the local state develop­ment bank that is part of the Helaba Group, we give pri­ority to sup­port­ing en­viron­mentally-friendly tech­nolo­gies and pro­jects re­lated to the energy tran­sition. Since March 2020, Helaba has been acting as a pass-through insti­tution in help­ing the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe Hessen-Thüringen, the re­gional sav­ings banks orga­ni­sa­tion, to roll out new pro­mo­tional loans offer­ed by the German federal develop­ment bank KfW. By the end of June, we had chan­nelled around 1,860 ap­plica­tions for KfW's corona­virus aid pro­grammes with a total vol­ume of around EUR 589 mil­lion.

• To­gether with the Sparkassen, we pro­vide assis­tance to medium-sized com­panies and local au­thor­i­ties in realis­ing re­new­able energy pro­jects. For this pur­pose, we offer a wide range of financ­ing so­lu­tions, for ex­ample for solar power plants and wind farms.

• We are extreme­ly active on the grow­ing mar­ket for sustain­able lend­ing and so-called ESG-linked loans and cover all im­por­tant stages from the ini­tial con­sul­ta­tion and structur­ing all the way to pro­viding sup­port in the syn­di­ca­tion pro­cess. For ESG-linked pro­ducts, the financ­ing terms are con­nect­ed to a sus­tain­abili­ty com­po­nent such as a rating or a per­form­ance indi­cator. This creates an ad­di­tional in­centive for the cus­tomer to act sustain­ably, which is some­thing we are keen to sup­port.

• The latest ad­dition to our pro­duct offer­ing is the Sustain­able Guarantee Facility, a guaran­tee faci­lity with a sustain­abili­ty com­po­nent.

We are also ex­pand­ing our range of pro­ducts with expli­cit sustain­abili­ty-related aspects in credit busi­ness:

• As a lead­ing pro­vider of Schuld­schein loans to com­panies and the public sec­tor, we have also de­vel­oped sustain­able alter­na­tives that have al­ready met with strong de­mand.

• Further­more, we pro­vide tailor-made so­lu­tions in the grow­ing seg­ment of ESG-linked pro­ducts - and have already suc­cess­fully ar­rang­ed several such trans­actions.

• We aim to boost our ac­tivi­ties in ad­visory and syn­di­cation ser­vices for green and social bonds.

As an asset manager for insti­tu­tional in­vestors, Helaba Invest in­cor­po­rates ESG factors as stan­dard into its invest­ment ap­proach­es and pro­ducts. For ex­ample, when select­ing se­curi­ties for invest­ment, it takes into ac­count the con­sump­tion of raw ma­terials and its im­pact on cli­mate change (the en­viron­ment), fair work­ing con­di­tions in the supply chain (social issues) as well as the struc­ture of a com­pany's manage­ment and the way they re­late to their own em­ploy­ees (gover­nance). The pro­por­­tion of clients with a focus on sustain­abil­ity is­sues is grow­ing stea­di­ly:

• For all mu­tual equi­ty funds, a syste­matic check is made of the ex­tent to which all securi­ties in the fund con­form to inter­na­tional sustain­abili­ty stan­dards and con­ven­tions.

• Helaba Invest also offers a range of fund pro­ducts gear­ed to spe­cific as­pects of sustain­able invest­ment.

• Helaba Invest's own sustain­abili­ty re­port­ing offers its cus­tomers ESG screen­ing and cor­respond­ing ana­lyses of segre­gated as­sets.

In the Helaba Group, re­tail cus­tomers are main­ly served by the Sparkassen. Finan­cial in­clusion is a key com­po­nent of their pub­lic ser­vice remit: their goal is to sup­port people of all sec­tions of so­cie­ty in ac­cumu­lat­ing sav­ings and as­sets. Two examples in­clude:

• Frankfurter Sparkasse, which pro­vides various basic ac­count models to en­able social­ly dis­advan­tag­ed and eco­nomi­cal­ly de­prived com­muni­ties, in parti­cular, to ac­cess bank­ing ser­vices.

• The mort­gage lender Landesbausparkasse (LBS) Hessen-Thüringen pro­vides home­owners with finan­cial sup­port to re­novate their pro­per­ties to be more energy effi­cient.

GWH Immobilien Holding GmbH (GWH) lets and manages around 50,000 apart­ments and is thus able to have a sub­stan­tial im­pact on the en­viron­ment and so­cie­ty:

• It makes af­ford­able hous­ing avail­able to broad sec­tions of the popu­lation and re­duces the nega­tive im­pact of its prop­erties on the en­viron­ment by re­no­vat­ing them and equip­ping them with en­viron­mental­ly friend­ly heat­ing sys­tems.

• In addition, GWH pro­vides space for com­muni­ty ser­vices, such as youth centres, creates places for resi­dents to meet in hous­ing estates or ar­rang­es the ser­vices of social workers.
  

Our sub­si­diary OFB Projektentwicklung GmbH (OFB), which is in­volv­ed in de­velop­ing large-scale real estate pro­jects, is also com­mit­ted to sustain­abili­ty:

• From the plan­ning stage to the rea­lisa­tion of its pro­jects, OFB takes a syste­matic ap­proach to in­clud­ing en­viron­mental and social cri­teria in sustain­able build­ing. The ma­jori­ty of its pro­jects signi­ficant­ly ex­ceed the re­quire­ments of the cur­rent­ly valid Energy Saving Ordinance.

• Vir­tual­ly all pro­jects are award­ed certi­fica­tions by the rele­vant rating systems for sustain­able build­ings (DGNB or LEED)

• Sustain­abili­ty cri­teria are also syste­mati­cally in­clud­ed in valua­tions when financ­ing real estate.

Wirtschafts- und Infra­struktur­bank Hessen (WIBank) per­forms public develop­ment tasks for the German State of Hesse, en­abling Hessian towns and muni­cipali­ties to become active­ly in­volved in en­viron­men­tal and cli­mate pro­tection:

• It pro­motes urban plan­ning that has a posi­tive demo­graphic im­pact, the con­struc­tion of social hous­ing, the energy-effi­cient reno­vation of liv­ing space or the con­struc­tion of new low-energy build­ings as well as modern waste­water facili­ties.

• WIBank's pro­mo­tional ac­tivi­ties are aimed at achiev­ing sustain­able eco­nomic and social de­vel­op­ment. A good ex­ample of this is the nation­wide ex­pan­sion of fibre optic net­works in Germany.

• Its tasks also in­clude loans for SMEs that create new jobs and ap­pren­tice­ships or re­tain exist­ing ones.

• As part of the State of Hesse's Covid-19 aid pro­gramme for busi­ness­es, WIBank pro­vides as­sis­tance to around 5,000 com­panies and free­lancers in severe fi­nan­cial dif­ficul­ty with loan com­mit­ments of over EUR 160 million. On be­half of the State of Hesse, WIBank ex­tends loans either direct­ly or via cus­tomers' princi­pal bank, or offers sup­port in the form of tar­get­ed de­velop­ment pro­grammes.