DKB
DKB, short for Deutsche Kreditbank AG, is a bank in Berlin that was founded in 1990 and has belonged entirely to BayernLB since 1995. With total assets of 139.5 billion euros, DKB counts itself among the 20 largest banks in Germany. Around 4,150 employees serve about 5.5 million private and business customers.
Private customers bank with DKB online and in its app, from current accounts and Visa cards to securities accounts, personal loans and mortgages. Business customers receive loans and personal advice at 27 locations across Germany. DKB focuses on sectors such as housing, renewable energy, health and care, education, agriculture and municipal infrastructure.
Private customers: accounts, cards and securities
The current account is the anchor product of DKB for private customers, and securities are meant to become the second one. At the end of June 2026 the bank managed 929,000 securities accounts holding 44.6 billion euros (in German), and it aims for more than two million accounts. A new brokerage infrastructure is meant to bring real-time processing, fractional trading and new pricing models to all customers.
Card payments of private customers grew by 10 percent in the first half of 2026, and payments abroad with both cards rose by 13 percent. The DKB app now shows more detail on instant transfers and lets customers manage scheduled instant payments.
Business customers and loans for infrastructure
DKB lends to companies and municipalities in sectors of basic public services: housing, health and care, education, agriculture, energy and utilities, and renewable energy. The bank financed its first wind turbine in 1996 and today finances almost 7,000 wind, solar and biogas plants (in German) with an installed capacity of about 22 gigawatts. About 3,600 housing companies and more than 12,400 commercial property managers are customers, and with 4.7 billion euros of business volume in agriculture DKB counts itself among the leading farm banks in Germany.
Loans to business customers reached 84.4 billion euros at the end of June 2026, of which 15.4 billion euros went to the New Energies customer group. DKB refinances wind and solar projects with green bonds and loans for social purposes with social bonds, and about 4.6 billion euros of both are outstanding.
Owner and company history
DKB was founded in Berlin in 1990 and has been a wholly owned subsidiary of BayernLB since 1995 (in German). BayernLB is a public-law institution whose owners, indirectly through BayernLB Holding AG, are the Free State of Bavaria and the Bavarian savings bank association. DKB is a member of the Association of German Public Banks (VÖB), one of the five associations of Die Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft, and of the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks.
The DKB group includes DKB AG and subsidiaries such as DKB Service GmbH with more than 1,500 employees, DKB Grund GmbH, DKB Finance GmbH and the DKB Code Factory. The DKB STIFTUNG, founded in 2004, bundles the social engagement of the bank, with projects on inclusion and on education for sustainable development.
Upcoming fintech and finance events in Germany
Board of management and supervisory board
Dr. Sven Deglow is chief executive of DKB and chairs a board of management with Tilo Hacke, Jan Walther, Arnulf Keese and Kristina Trink. Jan Walther is chief financial officer and Kristina Trink is chief risk officer of the bank. Stephan Winkelmeier chairs the supervisory board, and the European Central Bank is the supervisory authority responsible for the banking license of DKB.
Results for the first half of 2026
In the first half of 2026 DKB earned 666.9 million euros before taxes (in German), almost 19 percent more than a year earlier. Net interest income grew by about 25 percent to 1.077 billion euros, and the cost-income ratio fell from 37.2 to 33.8 percent. Loans to private and business customers rose to 111.6 billion euros and customer deposits to 100.1 billion euros, and DKB expects a profit before taxes of one billion euros for the full year.
AI and digital services
Under its strategy DKB 2030 the bank wants to build AI into products, services and internal processes. A digital agent already handles standard service requests, and AI-based document recognition speeds up lending processes. In a comparison of AI chatbots at banks published in March 2026, DKB shared first place for the quality of its answers and for use without a login.
Sascha Dewald of DKB sits on the board of the working group FinTechs & Digital Banking at Bitkom, which deals with financial regulation, AI in finance and cloud services for banks.
Headquarters in Berlin
On 13 October 2026 DKB opened its new headquarters, the DKB-Campus (in German), at Heidestraße 26-28 in the Europacity in Berlin-Mitte. About 2,600 employees of the DKB group, who used to work at several sites in Berlin, now share the building by Kleihues + Kleihues with around 35,000 square meters of rental space. The 82-meter complex has three parts with five, eleven and 19 floors and meets the KfW 55 energy standard.
Dr. Sven Deglow calls Berlin both the origin and the future of the bank, and DKB is one of the large banks of the Berlin financial center.
DKB and Finance Loop
Employees of DKB regularly attend the events that Finance Loop runs in Germany. DKB builds AI into customer service and lending, a subject on which banks in the Finance Loop network share questions about data protection and the EU AI Act. Finance Loop covers these questions in its track Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty and at its events in Berlin, Frankfurt and other German cities.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.