Our investment strategy concerning securities issued by the public-sector and banks continued to be strongly influenced by regulatory requirements and the ECB’s asset purchase programme.

Yields on 10-year Bunds fell to a new historic low of minus 0.205 percent due to the ECB’s asset purchase program making it hardly possible to find a low-risk security offering a profitable return on capital.

Due to this situation, and in accordance with our business strategy, we refrained from capital market business during the year under review. The volume of new business fell by € 0.7 billion to € 109 million, while the volume of securities in our portfolio declined by € 1.4 billion to € 6.8 billion at the end of 2016.