Sparkassengruppe Österreich
[3][4] The latter feature stands in contrast to Germany, where the Sparkassen are supervised individually as separate entities even though they are joined in an institutional protection scheme.
[5] Other savings banks were founded in subsequent years on an associative basis (German: Vereinssparkassen) by individuals such as aristocrats, clergy, senior civil servants, or doctors and pharmacists.
The model statute of 1872 abolished the previous restriction of savings banks services to "less well-off classes" and the degressive interest rate (the interest rate fell with the level of deposits); they now became "financial institutions of a humanitarian nature" (German: Geldanstalten humanitären Charakters) that could do business with all classes of the population.
[8] Savings banks were created in other parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, such as the Laibacher Sparkasse in today's Ljubljana (est.
The disruption could only be overcome because the legislature allowed the savings banks to carry out new tasks, especially current account business and cashless payment transactions as well as foreign exchange and currency trading.
[7]: 39-40 Between 1938 and 1945 under Anschluss, the Austrian savings banks adopted some features of the German system including the creation of the Girozentrale der ostmärkischen Sparkassen.
After the currency stabilization in 1952, the savings bank system underwent its most successful phase to date, with extremely high growth rates, although there were also strong government restrictions to combat inflation until the 1970s.
In order to offer all financial services, numerous subsidiaries in the insurance, leasing and investment sectors were founded.
Following new legislation in 1986, many savings banks transferred their operations to joint-stock subsidiaries, which allowed the latter to raise external equity capital.
[6] In 2001, the savings banks agreed to form a Haftungsverbund or mutual support pact,[8] which was later designated as an institutional protection scheme (IPS) under EU law.
Outside of Vienna, the 46 local savings banks extant as of early 2024 are, by chronological order of creation (of the oldest entity in cases of subsequent mergers): Die Zweite Sparkasse (full name Die Zweite Wiener Vereins-Sparcasse) is a Vereinssparkasse created in 2006 by the ERSTE Foundation in Vienna.
The local savings banks in Austria are governed by private-sector law, unlike most of their German counterparts which are public-law organizations (Anstalt des öffentlichen Rechts [de]).
[17]: 30 Because of the scheme's mandatory character and public guarantees, S-Haftungs GmbH has been classified as part of the Austrian government sector by Eurostat for national accounts purposes, despite misgivings from Sparkassengruppe representatives.
It overlaps, but does not coincide, with the institutional guarantee scheme, which relies on an "ex-ante fund" managed by a jointly owned entity, IPS GesbR.
[12] In accordance with Austrian savings bank legislation, the Sparkassengruppe relies on an in-house auditor, the Sparkassen-Prüfungsverband (also known as the Prüfungsstelle), jointly with an external audit firm.
