“Personal advisory is still valuable in the digital world”

• 2015 was the strongest year since the financial crisis
• Further increase in dividend to 65 cents per share

Cologne, 3 June 2016 – In his speech to the company’s shareholders, Mario Freis, CEO of OVB Holding AG since February, emphasised the strengths of the financial brokerage group operating across Europe. “OVB’s success has a broad basis thanks to our international positioning. With regard to total sales commission and operating income, 2015 was OVB’s best year since the financial crisis. This positive trend also continued in the first quarter of 2016 for all relevant financial figures,” said Freis.

He currently sees three key topics for the industry: Demographic change, which is resulting in decreasing effectiveness of social security systems and thus gaps in provision for citizens throughout Europe and is generally increasing the risk of poverty in old age, is both a challenge and an opportunity. In addition, the current low-interest phase, which is likely to last a long time, is contributing to uncertainty within the population and thus causing reticence in relation to the urgently required private insurance and pension provision. One of the biggest challenges for the financial advisory sector is the constantly changing regulatory environment throughout Europe.

With regard to its future strategic orientation, OVB will initially focus on the key action areas. Among other things, Freis announced that it will use its strong positioning throughout Europe both to expand its position further in existing markets and also to take its business model to new markets if the timing and general conditions are right.

OVB regards the topics of process optimisation and digitalisation as important strategic pillars in order to achieve further increases in efficiency and react to changing customer behaviour. “We will continue to combine our key strength – personal, trust-based contact with our customers – with the current technical possibilities. Technology will not replace personal consulting, but rather will place it centre stage,” said Freis with regard to the future strategic orientation.

Outlook for 2016

Following its success in 2015 and the first quarter of 2016, OVB has slightly raised its outlook for the year as a whole and now expects total sales commission at close to the previous year’s level and a slight year-on-year increase in operating income.

Dividend increases again

Based on the good results in 2015, the Annual General Meeting, which saw attendance of 97.00%, agreed to the proposal by the Supervisory Board and the Executive Board and unanimously resolved to distribute an 8.3% higher dividend of 65 cents per share (2014: 60 cents) for the 2015 financial year.

About the OVB Group

The OVB Group, with its holding company headquartered in Cologne, is one of Europe’s leading financial advisory groups. Since being founded in 1970, OVB’s business activities have focused on long-term, comprehensive and above all customer-oriented allfinanz consulting for private households. OVB works with more than 100 high-performance providers and uses competitive products to serve its clients’ individual needs, from subsistence and property/asset insurance to asset building and growth. OVB currently operates in 14 European countries.

Over 5,100 full-time financial advisors currently advise approximately 3.26 million clients. In 2015, OVB Holding AG and its subsidiaries generated total sales commission of €224.7 million and EBIT of €14.0 million. OVB Holding AG has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (Prime Standard, ISIN DE0006286560) since July 2006.