Takarék Mortgage Bank Outlines Strategy

In the context of the rolling revision of Takarék Group’s strategy in 2020 the priorities of the Group remain the deepening of synergies between the entities of the Integration, continued improvements in the cooperation between members and in the Group’s competitiveness in general, the bank says on the website of the Budapest Stock Exchange.

At the end of the first half of 2020, Takarék Group together with MKB Bank and Budapest Bank created an equally owned company, Magyar Bankholding Ltd., which is a platform to examine how and in what form the cooperation of the three banking groups can be strengthened in the future. (In the field of refinancing, Takarék Mortgage Bank has previously started cooperation with MKB Bank and Budapest Bank.)

The original main activity of Takarék Mortgage Bank was the financing of the development and the purchase of residential real estate and the extension of housing loans subsidised by the state. From 2018 the Bank operates as a pure mortgage bank; its principal activities are the refinancing of mortgage backed loans of partner banks either within or outside the Integration and the issuance of mortgage bonds. The Bank is the second largest mortgage bank in the domestic market.

In line with the pure mortgage bank concept the Bank focuses principally on mortgage bond issuance and refinancing activity (although it continues to keep the earlier accumulated stock of client credits – mostly household mortgage-backed loans – in its books until expiry). As the second largest issuer of mortgage bonds in the Hungarian market, the Bank bases its refinancing activity on contractual arrangements with several large and medium-sized members of the Hungarian banking sector outside the Integration. According to its business policy, the Bank pursues to manage significant volumes in the market segments where it is active alongside competitive pricing. Following the gradual correction on the real estate markets in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic in the first half of the year, the Bank makes efforts to strengthen its market position by making use of the current market circumstances (buying back its formerly issued, unfavourably priced mortgage bond series, issuing more favourably priced mortgage bond series even through the central bank’s mortgage bond purchasing scheme).

The Bank’s strategic objective is to optimize both its operations and the range of products and services it offers. More specifically: the Bank is going to improve the simplicity and transparency of its refinancing credit lines, to develop its existing and introduce new auxiliary services (real estate sales technologies, IT solutions), to reduce the costs of financing through mortgage bonds issuance and to achieve fully automated, fast and secure operation.