DGAP-News

Hypoport AG: EUROPACE achieves significant double-digit growth in 2014 as the volume of transactions hits a new record

DGAP-News: Hypoport AG / Key word(s): Quarter Results
Hypoport AG: EUROPACE achieves significant double-digit growth in 2014
as the volume of transactions hits a new record

14.01.2015 / 08:12

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Press release

Volume of transactions in 2014

EUROPACE achieves significant double-digit growth in 2014 as the volume of
transactions hits a new record

Berlin, 14 January 2015: The volume of transactions completed in 2014 on
EUROPACE - the marketplace for financial products - grew by 15 per cent
year on year to EUR36.2 billion, which was a new record. Mortgage finance
was once again the strongest product segment, generating transactions worth
EUR27.8 billion (up 14 per cent). However, building finance and personal
loans also achieved double-digit year-on-year growth. In addition, the
number of partners actively using EUROPACE continued to rise sharply - by
around 20 per cent - to almost 300.

"Demand for residential property remains high on the back of continually
low interest rates. On the other hand, these sluggish rates are not
providing much stimulus," commented Thilo Wiegand, Chief Executive Officer
of Europace AG. "The data currently available therefore suggests that the
German mortgage finance market as a whole will again have grown only
marginally in 2014. By contrast, the sharply rising numbers of transactions
and partners on EUROPACE demonstrate that more and more banks recognise the
appeal of our flexible marketplace solution."

The fourth quarter of the year is traditionally a fairly weak one for
mortgage finance. Nonetheless, the transaction volume of EUR9.2 billion
generated by EUROPACE in this quarter of 2014 fell only just short of the
record figure of EUR9.6 billion reported for the third quarter and is
therefore the second-best quarterly result ever achieved by the Company."We
believe this can be partly attributed to transactions that were brought
forward in anticipation of the increases in real estate transfer tax
introduced in the German federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and
Saarland on 1 January 2015," explained Wiegand.

The product segments in detail

The total volume of transactions generated across all product segments grew
by just under 15 per cent year on year to EUR36.2 billion (2013: EUR31.6
billion). Mortgage finance transactions amounted to EUR27.8 billion, which
constituted a year-on-year rise of more than EUR3.4 billion or 14 per cent
(2013: EUR24.4 billion) and meant that this product segment accounted for
almost 77 per cent of the total volume of transactions. The other product
segments also achieved double-digit growth. Building finance helped boost