Digitalisation of KfW’s promotional business – electronic funding approvals for KfW SME loans

• KfW is continuing its digitalisation process and expanding online approvals from housing sector programmes to KfW SME loans
• SME customers benefit from much faster application process
• Digitalisation of almost all of KfW's commercial products together with all financing partners planned by the end of 2017

Deutsche Bank and Postbank have become the first financing partners to implement electronic funding approvals for KfW's commercial programmes. This allows advisors at both banks to apply for KfW promotional loans to finance SME customers, have their eligibility for promotion checked automatically and obtain a funding approval from KfW immediately in a completely online-based process. This reduces the amount of time customers have to wait for a funding approval from several banking days in the past to just a few seconds.

Electronic promotional loan approvals are initially being implemented by Deutsche Bank and Postbank. They allow small and medium-sized enterprises to reliably incorporate KfW promotional loans into their plans during consultations with their banks. The On-lending Online 2.0 (BDO 2.0) will initially cover the particularly popular "KfW Entrepreneur Loan" programme as well as the "ERP Regional Promotion Programme". Other commercial products will be added successively, so that by the end of 2017 electronic funding approvals will be enabled for almost all of KfW's commercial products. The plan is for all of KfW's financing partners to successively connect to the on-lending online platform for commercial products by the end of 2017. The established partnership between KfW and the regular business banks will remain unchanged.

KfW issued its first online approval for housing sector programmes in May 2014 with Postbank as the pilot partner. The agreement in this regard was concluded in 2013 under the name of "On-lending Online 2.0" (BDO 2.0) for KfW's online approvals in the construction and housing sector as part of the joint pilot project with Deutsche Bank and Postbank as well as lead institutions within the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe and the Genossenschaftliche Finanzgruppe. The on-lending online platform for housing sector financing is now used by almost all of KfW's financing partners.

"With its digitalisation raodmap, KfW is consistently pursuing its objective of simplifying the application and approval processes in the promotional loan business and making them more efficient. Almost all loans in the housing sector are already approved via our promotional funding platform within the space of a few seconds. The incorporation of commercial promotional products into the platform is another significant milestone on the path to the digital transformation of KfW's promotional business in Germany," said Dr Ingrid Hengster, Member of KfW Group's Executive Board.