Das neue Geben: Banking mit Impact fischt am falschen Ende des Marktes

A friend recently received unusual mail, similar to the 35,000 other customers of the sustainable Triodos Bank who are being asked to cancel their accounts. The bank’s management informs in the letter that Germany cannot become a significant player with this offering in the foreseeable future. This might suggest there isn't enough demand for green and social investment products in Germany.

However, the truth is quite different: the market faces structural challenges. The issue lies precisely where these products could work well: among affluent customers. Triodos is not alone in this situation. The Christian banks, Pax-Bank and Bank for Church and Caritas, have merged, and the digital bank Tomorrow has shrunk in 2025 and still posted a loss.

Customers love the eco-friendly debit cards, but they invest elsewhere. The investment universe is expanding upwards. The growth problem is not there. The niche wealth management GLS Bank, with 388,000 customers and 11.6 billion euros in volume, still earns only a third of what other cooperative banks manage, at 24 cents per 100 euros of balance sheet.

The reason is that sustainability banks need to offer the same products as everyone else, but they finance a narrow universe of socially or environmentally oriented enterprises. These loans and investments are often smaller and more costly to service than those of conventional competitors. Despite all this, a positive impact promise cannot be economically mapped by banks, and that would be a catastrophic mistake.

The demand is enormous in the largest wealth transfer in history. 80% of Gen Z and Millennials plan to use more impact investments, according to Morgan Stanley. It's especially large among the wealthy, whose number in Germany has grown by 11% in 2025, according to Capgemini. Besides established private banks, there are successful wealth techs like Liqid or Finvia as digital multi-family offices without an impact mission.

In March, I wrote that wealth managers would lose the ereditary generation, and in July, that tax advisors would avoid clients who want to use their money for public good. Both times, I received the same question from heirs, advisors, and even a bank manager: Where should someone go to solve societal problems across all investment classes? So far, this niche market is still a blind spot.