Strategy and Goals

Timelessly modern values create a solid foundation: Values like reliability, stability and solidity have always formed the bedrock of all banking business.
 
Our 9 strategic goals:

Guided by our corporate values, Oberbank formulated 9 strategic goals, which constitute the framework for the bank’s exceptionally successful business policy that has proven its worth over the years:

• Priority goal: safeguarding the independence and autonomy of Oberbank
  Oberbank’s focus on this goal ensures that all the bank’s activities will always serve the interests of its customers, shareholders and employees in a well-balanced manner, now and in the future. This priority goal is the basis and guiding principle of all of Oberbank’s other strategic goals.     
• High quality of advisory services
  The Bank’s business strategy defines business customers – primarily industrial and medium-sized companies – and private customers as equally important pillars. In corporate and business banking, Oberbank has established itself as a highly competent partner in cross-border business, a key player with special know-how in the field of investment finance and as a supplier of alternative forms of financing such as equity and mezzanine capital finance. In personal and private banking, Oberbank excels with high quality and expertise in providing financial services that require a substantial amount of advisory support and possesses exceptional know-how when it comes to complex types of investment, securities transactions and private banking as well as residential construction finance.     
• Continuous organic growth
  Oberbank’s growth course is based on organic growth, that is, through expanding its network of branches. For this reason, Oberbank, in contrast to many other banks, has no goodwill in its balance sheet and therefore does not run a risk of having to write off impairment losses on such assets. The objective of this expansion policy is to enable the Bank to accompany existing customers into new markets and to participate in the high growth potential of such markets by acquiring new customers there.     
• Concentration on Risk Management
  Oberbank only takes on risks it can handle on the strength of its own resources. Key objectives are to maintain corporate risk stable at a low level as well as to hold the risk/earnings ratio below 25% in the long term while keeping the impairment allowance ratio below 0.7%.      
• Safeguarding long-term liquidity
  Oberbank has traditionally tried to ensure that the Bank’s entire lending volume can be refinanced from primary deposits by customers and other long-term refinancing resources, e.g. the assistance funds made available by Oesterreichische Kontrollbank (OeKB), Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) and LfA Förderbank Bayern. Furthermore, Oberbank holds extensive liquidity reserves in the form of securities and eligible loan assets. What is more, the Bank has access to open refinancing lines at a large number of other banks and institutional investors.
• No proprietary trading detached from customer business
  Oberbank does not conduct any noteworthy proprietary trading that is not related to customer business. The work focus of the Global Financial Markets department is on services in the field of interest rate and currency risk management for customers and on activities for the Bank's Asset/Liability and Liquidity Management department.     
• Strategic staff development
  Oberbank consistently endeavours to enhance the professional expertise and social competence of its staff through systematic and needs-oriented further training of its staff members. The management by objectives (MbO) approach and predefined standards of performance provide clear orientation for management and employees and ensure regular targeted feedback.     
• Ensuring long-term competitiveness by focusing on lean processes
  Business processes are efficiently designed and company structures are kept lean. Rationalisation projects and a shifting of resources from administrative processes to customer activities contribute to creating the basis for a solid earnings trend and constantly good profitability ratios.
• Sustainability
  Sustainable thinking and acting has always been a fixed part of the Oberbank strategy. As an independent regional bank we have trong ties to the the people and economy in the region.  
  We are clearly committed to the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5°C. As a credit institution, we have a key role in the transition to low-carbon economy. According to the European Union's Action Plan for Financing Sustainable Growth, we want to direct capital flows towards sustainable investments.

Based on these principles, Oberbank has developed a Code of Conduct containing the guidelines of our business policy and the minimum standards for the conduct of Oberbank and the persons acting for the institution.

Historical Summary

The foundation and the first few decades

At a meeting convened in Linz on 13 April 1869, the participants resolved to establish a “joint stock company in partnership with its consorts”. The company to be established was to be designated “Bank für Ober-Oesterreich und Salzburg” and have its head office in Linz. The new bank was to be officially founded on 1 July 1869. The Federal Province of Upper Austria became a shareholder of Oberbank in 1920, followed by Bayerische Vereinsbank in 1921. In 1929, Creditanstalt für Handel und Gewerbe (CA) became the majority owner of Oberbank.

Oberbank in the aftermath of World War II

In 1945 Oberbank, besides its Linz head office and the Salzburg principal branch, consisted of eleven branch offices. As early as 1946, the Austrian National Bank granted Oberbank a foreign currency trading licence; in 1949 the Bank was appointed ERP Bank under the Marshall Plan. Starting in 1955, a pronounced upward turn marked the Bank’s development as it adopted the business model of a universal bank. The Bank gained personal banking customers, expanded its business by taking in deposits from private individuals and extending loans to this customer group, and thus laid the foundation for gaining an equally strong foothold in corporate and personal banking.

The 3 Banken Group

After World War II, Creditanstalt, which held majority stakes in the three regional banks Oberbank, Bank für Kärnten AG (today BKS Bank AG) and Bank für Tirol und Vorarlberg Aktiengesellschaft (BTV), divided its shares into three lots, retained one third of each lot itself and sold off a stake of one third in each of the banks to the respective other two regional banks. The originally capital-based links between Oberbank, BKS and BTV developed into a close, partnership-based cooperation that continues today, evidenced by a joint marketing approach under the banner of the 3 Banken Group. The three banks cooperate closely wherever there is synergy potential to be utilised, and their jointly held subsidiaries such as 3 Banken IT GmbH, Drei-Banken Versicherungs-Aktiengesellschaft and 3 Banken-Generali Investment-Gesellschaft all boast a particularly successful track record. This cooperation in no way interferes with the three banks’ market presences as autonomous banking institutions.

Listing on the Vienna Stock Exchange

By going public on 1 July 1986, Oberbank and its sister banks paved the way for the three banks to lastingly distance themselves from the influence of CA and continue with an independent strategy. Today, Oberbank’s shareholder structure includes, besides its two sister banks, UniCredit Bank Austria, Wüstenrot, Generali and the Oberbank employees.

Oberbank today: “a regional bank at the heart of Europe”

The freedom of establishment of banks introduced in the 1970s allowed Oberbank to extend its catchment area beyond its original heartlands of Upper Austria and Salzburg. Oberbank has been represented with separate branches in Lower Austria since 1985, in Vienna since 1988, in Bavaria since 1990, in the Czech Republic since 2004, in Hungary since 2007 and in Slovakia since 2009.