Strong plus in 2023

How much money is in savings in Upper Austria

Significantly more savings were made in Upper Austria in 2023.(Bild: Eva Manhart)

High agreements in the collective bargaining negotiations, the associated salary increases and at the same time a subdued spending mood have led to an increase in the financial reserves of Upper Austrians. You can read here how high the savings deposits are and what trends are emerging.

Save in time, you will have in need - many Upper Austrians must have taken this well-known saying to heart last year. In any case, savings deposits at the banks rose sharply in 2023.

"We were somewhat surprised"
"There was a huge increase in customer deposits in the fourth quarter - among private individuals and companies. This came as something of a surprise to us," revealed Oberbank CEO Franz Gasselsberger.

Customers want to invest in reliable forms of savings without being too exposed to valuation risks.

Heinrich Schaller, Generaldirektor der Raiffeisenlandesbank OÖ

Upper Austria - a land of super savers. What are the reasons for this? Heinrich Schaller, General Director of Raiffeisenlandesbank Oberösterreich, attributes the increase in savings volume "essentially to the rise in interest rates". Stefanie Christina Huber, General Director of Sparkasse Oberösterreich, registered "customers shifting from current account deposits to higher-interest products".

We were able to gain 5000 new customers last year. Online savings played a significant role in this.

Klaus Kumpfmüller, Vorstandschef Hypo OÖ

Slower buying mood
In addition, the high agreements reached in the collective bargaining negotiations, which resulted in real wage increases, had an impact. "And people were not motivated to spend these increases accordingly," muses Gasselsberger. The dampened buying mood is causing problems for retailers in all sectors, with cheaper own brands making gains in the food sector.

Savings deposits at the five banks grew by more than 3.8 billion euros in one year.(Bild: Krone KREATIV)

The result: if the savings deposits of Oberbank, Sparkasse Oberösterreich, VKB, Hypo OÖ and Raiffeisen Oberösterreich are added together, their customers had a total cash reserve of 30.9 billion euros at the end of the previous year. This represents an increase of almost 3.8 billion euros within one year.

Online savings are booming
Online saving in particular is growing enormously. More than three quarters of the new savings products concluded at Hypo OÖ in 2023 were made online. Despite the trend, VKB is sticking to the physical savings book: "We make no difference to the conditions of the online savings book," emphasizes CEO Markus Auer.