
The Raiffeisen Banking Group (, RBG) is a group of
cooperative bank
Cooperative banking is retail and commercial banking organized on a cooperative basis. Cooperative banking institutions take deposits and lend money in most parts of the world.
Cooperative banking, as discussed here, includes retail banking carr ...
s in
Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
. The Austrian Raiffeisen banks are not consolidated under a single parent entity but are financially linked through a common
institutional protection scheme and
deposit guarantee scheme. The group's international operations, by contrast, are consolidated under
Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI).
History
The movement to create rural cooperative banks initiated in Germany by
Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen spread to the
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg monarchy, also known as Habsburg Empire, or Habsburg Realm (), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities (composite monarchy) that were ruled by the House of Habsburg. From the 18th century it is ...
in 1886, two years before Raiffeisen's death, with the establishment of the country's first ''Raiffeisenkasse'' at
Mühldorf
Mühldorf am Inn (, ; Central Bavarian: ''Muihdorf am Inn'') is a Town#Germany, town in Bavaria, Germany, and the capital of the Mühldorf (district), district Mühldorf on the river Inn (river), Inn. It is located at , and had a population of ab ...
near
Spitz
A spitz (; , in reference to the pointed muzzle) is a Dog type, type of domestic dog consisting of between 50 and 70 breeds depending on classification. There is no precise definition of 'spitz' but typically most spitz breeds have pricked ears ...
in
Lower Austria
Lower Austria ( , , abbreviated LA or NÖ) is one of the nine states of Austria, located in the northeastern corner of the country. Major cities are Amstetten, Lower Austria, Amstetten, Krems an der Donau, Wiener Neustadt and Sankt Pölten, which ...
. The movement first national representative body was founded in 1898 under the name ''Allgemeiner Verband landwirtschaftlicher Genossenschaften in Österreich'' (). As Austria became a separate republic in 1918, more than 2000 local Raiffeisen banks were present on the new country's territory. In 1927, a central financial institution was created the ''Genossenschaftliche Zentralbank'', later renamed ''Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich''. In the following decade, the group built up its network of regional banks. Following the
Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...
in 1938, the Austrian Raiffeisen banks were subsumed into the German cooperative financial group. The separate Austrian group was recreated in the postwar era, with the ''Allgemeiner Verband'' re-established in 1946 and renamed in 1960 as ''Österreichischer Raiffeisenverband''.
The group's international expansion started in 1986 with the creation of a first banking subsidiary in
Hungary
Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
. In 1989, the ''Genossenschaftliche Zentralbank'' was renamed
Raiffeisen Zentralbank
Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich A.G. (RZB) was a significant bank in Austria and the central institution of the Raiffeisen Banking Group (RBG) until its merger into its subsidiary Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) in 2017.
It had subsidi ...
(RZB). By 2003, the group had expanded to 15 central and eastern European countries. The international activities were brought together into ''Raiffeisen International Bank-Holding AG'', which went public in 2005 and was merged into the new RBI entity in 2010. In 2017, RBI in turn absorbed its parent company RZB, thus resulting in a more streamlined group structure.
[
]
Members
As of end-2021, the group included 342 local cooperative banks (''Raiffeisenbank''), 8 regional wholesale banks (''Raiffeisenlandesbank''), and the central entity Raiffeisen Bank International. All ''Raiffeisenlandesbanken'' are owned by their respective member banks; their legal form is a cooperative (, eGen), limited-liability cooperative (, regGenmbH), or joint-stock-company (, AG). The ''Raiffeisenlandesbanken'' in turn own RBI under a shareholders' agreement
A shareholders' agreement (sometimes referred to in the U.S. as a stockholders' agreement) (SHA) is an enforceable agreement amongst the shareholders or members of a company. In practical effect, it is analogous to a partnership agreement. There ...
. The eight Raiffeisen-Landesbanken as of early 2024 were:
* Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien AG
* Raiffeisenlandesbank Oberösterreich AG
*
*
* Raiffeisenlandesbank Kärnten - Rechenzentrum und Revisionsverband regGenmbH
* Raiffeisen-Landesbank Tirol AG
*
*
Group-level arrangements and deposit insurance
Until 2021, the Raiffeisen Banking Group's institutional protection scheme included seven regional funds (one for each of the federal states of Austria
Austria is a federation, federal republic consisting of nine federal states. The European Commission calls them provinces. Austrian federal states can pass laws that stay within the limits of the constitution, and each federal state has represe ...
except Carinthia and Salzburg) complemented by a national fund. A mutual support scheme established in 1999, the Raiffeisen Customer Guarantee Scheme Austria (, RKÖ) was phased out in 2019.
Until end-2018, the Raiffeisen Banking Group relied on an in-house deposit insurance system, the Österreichische Raiffeisen-Einlagensicherung eGen (ÖRE). As a belated consequence of the EU Deposit Guarantee Scheme Directive of 2014, the Raiffeisen Banking Group decided to join the Austrian national deposit guarantee scheme ( or ESA, also known in Austria as the uniform scheme), starting on . In 2020, however, the Raiffeisen banks had to contribute to the replenishment of the uniform deposit fund following the near-simultaneous failures of and . A perception that risk-sharing within the uniform scheme was detrimental to the Raiffeisen participants led to the decision in 2021 to form a separate deposit guarantee scheme as allowed by Austrian law, Österreichische Raiffeisen-Sicherungseinrichtung eGen (ÖRS), which became operational in November 2021. At that occasion and as part of an agreement with the Austrian Financial Market Authority and European Banking Supervision
European Banking Supervision, also known as the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), is the policy framework for the prudential supervision of banks in the euro area. It is centered on the European Central Bank (ECB), whose supervisory arm is re ...
, the Raiffeisen Banking Group simultaneously streamlined its institutional protection scheme structure into a single nationwide fund. ÖRS also manages liquid assets for the institutional protection scheme. The previous sub-national funds were accordingly dissolved in June 2021.
Under Austrian law, the Raiffeisen deposit guarantee scheme may be called to intervene if the other two schemes, the uniform ESA and that of the Sparkassengruppe Österreich
The ''Sparkassengruppe Österreich'' () brings together all savings banks () in Austria. Tracing its origins to 1819, it serves around 4 million customers in 797 branches with more than 15,500 employees, with a customer share in Austria around 31 ...
, are depleted; conversely, the two other scheme may protect Raiffeisen depositors if the Raiffeisen scheme gets depleted.[ The Austrian state may intervene if all three schemes are depleted.
The bank is still operating in Russia despite the sanctions imposed by the European Union on the Russian Federation after the Russian attack on Ukraine. In May 2024, the United States Treasury Department warned that Raiffeisen is at risk of having its access to the US financial system curtailed because of its operations in Russia. Raiffeisen subsequently announced that it would suspend all outgoing payments in US dollars from Russia by June 10th that year.]
See also
* Credit union
A credit union is a member-owned nonprofit organization, nonprofit cooperative financial institution. They may offer financial services equivalent to those of commercial banks, such as share accounts (savings accounts), share draft accounts (che ...
* Banking in Austria
* List of banks in Austria
References
External links
*
Cooperative banks of Austria
Raiffeisen Zentralbank
{{Europe-bank-stub