un passaggio importante della trimestrale 2012
As a result of the continuing decline in interest rates in the money and capital markets, the returns generated from the current investment policy (whereby most of the investments are in German government or lower government paper and Pfandbriefe) are steadily diminishing. The return on the investment portfolio is steadily declining towards the rate that BinckBank offers on savings, which is currently 1.5%. There is thus a danger that the savings accounts will become loss-making. With effect from the end of March, BinckBank has therefore decided to revise its investment policy to some extent. Accordingly, for part of its investment portfolio (subject to a maximum of 30% and up to € 10 million per counterparty) BinckBank will accept a higher credit risk for its lending in order to maintain the return on savings at not less than a break-even level. Under the new policy, the permitted investments will include bonds issued by banks, supranational institutions, and government institutions of European countries. The essence of the new policy is to allow more diversification across issuers and countries and a partial reduction of the one-sided exposure to Germany. BinckBank will not invest directly in the European periphery.