In 2009, more than 90 partners used the Europace platform. Many other especially regional players in the market showed a marked interest in cooperation. The relevance of some of the major players declined over the same period, which pushed transaction volumes down temporarily.
The Europace platform attracted extensive interest in the financial services marketplace last year. Some 31 new partners opted to use the marketplace for processing their future transactions. Currently, 93 partners use the platform, which equates to an increase of 50% compared with the previous year. The number of new product providers, especially, is strategically important.
These increased by 65.4 % to 43. According to Thilo Wiegand, Member of the Management Board at Hypoport AG who is in charge of platform business: "These partners are bringing a lot of new and competitive products to the platform, which not only raise the appeal of the platform; they will also help to balance out any fluctuations in future transaction volumes such as those witnessed last year as the business of some of the major partners slumped. Over the long term, however, the potential offered by these partners on the platform will have much wider-reaching benefits than just balancing out volumes", according to Wiegand. The structure of the product providers is shifting away from the dominance of a few major players and towards a colourful mixture comprised of numerous providers, some of which operate on a regional basis only.
Year on year, transaction volumes dipped by 12% to 12.9 billion in 2009 as some of the major product providers weakened. Mortgage financing, which still accounts for the lion's share of the platform volume, declined by 15.5% to 11.4 billion. By contrast, the volume of personal loans increased by 15.8 percent to Euro 1.3 billion, and accounted for about 10 percent of total volume. Moreover, the number of personal loans was higher than the number of mortgage financing transactions for the first time ever. Building society contracts the most recent category to join the product range also witnessed satisfactory development, posting an increase of 486 percent to their current volume of 211 million.
On balance, Wiegand is very satisfied: "While the crisis may have affected our transaction volumes last year, it did not have any adverse impact on our strategic positioning nor on the level of interest shown in the financial marketplace. Quite the opposite: We have registered a marked increase in the commitment to our platform solutions."
This was demonstrated not just by the record number of participants at the Genopace conference for Cooperative banks and Raiffeisenbanks in September. At "Finanzmarktplatz für Sparkassen" (FINMAS) an event that provides information on the financial marketplace for savings banks both speakers and visitors stressed the strategic importance of internet-based sales solutions for savings banks. No doubt the sector will be avidly discussing corresponding strategies and the revolutionary impact they are having on the markets again at the 15th Europace Conference in February. According to Wiegand: "All of these developments are clear signals that the magnetic attraction of the platform the so-called marketplace effect is steadily growing."
Source: Hypoport AG
