German financial consulting

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Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG

logo
legal form Corporation
founding July 1, 1975
Seat Frankfurt am Main , Germany
management Andreas Pohl
Number of employees approx. 17,000 full-time financial advisors
sales approx. 1.87 billion euros
Branch Financial distribution
Website www.dvag.de
Status: 2019

Entrance to the new headquarters in Frankfurt on Wilhelm-Leuschner-Strasse
Former headquarters in Frankfurt on Münchener Strasse

The German Investment Advisory Ltd. ( DVAG ) is a primarily in Germany, Austria and Switzerland financial sales . The company is controlled by Deutsche Vermögensberatung Holding and is registered with the Frankfurt am Main Chamber of Commerce and Industry as a tied insurance agent in accordance with the EU Brokerage Directive . The company, which is organized as a structured sales organization, was founded in 1975 by Reinfried Pohl (1928–2014) and its headquarters are in Frankfurt am Main.

Companies

Around 17,000 full-time financial advisors advise and support 8 million customers. In the 2019 financial year, DVAG had sales of 1.87 billion euros and a profit of 203.6 million euros. The volume of all brokered contracts (total portfolio) was over 214 billion euros. The Pohl family holds a majority of 60 percent plus ten shares in DVAG through Deutsche Vermögensberatung Holding ; Generali Deutschland Holding AG holds the remaining shares .

Managing directors

Board

The company is managed by the board of directors consisting of the following people:

  • Andreas Pohl (Chairman of the Board of Management)
  • Andreas Franken (Legal, Human Resources)
  • Hans-Theo Franken (central sales coordination, products, partner companies, abroad)
  • Christian Glanz (information technology, VB service, administration)
  • Lars Knackstedt (finance, investments, real estate)
  • Markus Knapp (Central Sales Development)
  • Helge Lach (market and regulation, associations, center for asset advice)
  • Robert Peil (coordination of sales areas, marketing, events)
  • Dirk Reiffenrath (training and further education, vocational training centers, business college)

Supervisory board and advisory board

Friedrich Bohl has been the chairman of the supervisory board since March 31, 2009 .

The Chairman of the Advisory Board has been Minister of State a. D. Udo Corts . Before that, it was ex-Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl until 2014 and a former Minister of Finance until 2020. D. Theo Waigel . Other well-known advisory board members are (as of 2020) Rolf-E. Breuer , Rainer Neske , Petra Roth , Wolfgang Schüssel , Hermann Otto Solms and Karl Starzacher .

history

In 1975, Reinfried Pohl began building the “Kompass Gesellschaft für Vermögensanlagen GmbH”. Pohl previously worked for Investors Overseas Services (IOS) from 1967 to 1969 and at Bonnfinanz from 1970 to 1974 . He started on July 1, 1975 with around 35 former Bonnfinanz employees.

In 1976 "Allgemeine Vermögensberatung AG" (AVAG) was founded. In 1983 AVAG changed its name to "Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG". In 1984 Reinfried Pohl's sons, Andreas and Reinfried junior, joined the company's management. In 1993 the company founded an Austrian subsidiary, which today operates under the name "Deutsche Vermögensberatung Bank Aktiengesellschaft". In 2001 the cooperation with Deutsche Bank began .

In 2003 the company reorganized its structure with the creation of the "Deutsche Vermögensberatung Holding" based in Marburg. In 2004 it started business operations in Switzerland with “SVAG Schweizer Vermögensberatung”. In 2007, DVAG took over the exclusive distribution of AachenMünchener Insurance and has been running it since then in an independent subsidiary, "Allfinanz Deutsche Vermögensberatung". In the same year, FVD was integrated into the company. In 2008 DVAG took over the sales of Deutsche Bausparkasse Badenia , and in 2018 the exclusive sales of Generali (EVG).

Partner company

Germany

The Generali Deutschland Group works with companies such as AachenMünchener , Deutsche Bausparkasse Badenia , Advocard legal protection insurance and Central Krankenversicherung . There are other collaborations through this such as B. with the health insurance company BKK Linde .

For AachenMünchener Versicherungen, DVAG is the only sales channel.

As part of a partnership with the Deutsche Bank Group , DVAG has been selling bank products from Deutsche Bank (DB) and investment funds from DB subsidiary DWS since 2001 . Further partners are Commerzbank , HypoVereinsbank , DSL Bank , Santander Bank , Allianz Global Investors , RREEF Investment GmbH (formerly: DB Real Estate Investment GmbH).

The German clearing house (DV), based in Frankfurt am Main, specializes in invoice management for craft and medium-sized businesses. It offers products and services that secure the liquidity of companies. It was founded in 2015 by Andreas and Reinfried Pohl.

Austria

For example Generali Versicherungs AG, UniCreditbank Austria , Österreichische Postsparkasse , Allianz Global Investors, dws (Austria) Investmentgesellschaft and Pioneers Investments Austria .

Switzerland

For example Generali, PAX, bank zweiplus, bankcoop , ÖKK , Visana , swica , assura , Concordia , Sanitas , and Groupe Mutuel .

education

Deutsche Vermögensberatung, in cooperation with the Deutsche Akademie für Vermögensberatung (DAV), offers training to become a certified financial advisor (DBBV). With this training, DVAG qualifies industry insiders as well as non-professionals.

In addition, the DAV offers the classic dual training as a businessman for insurance and finance (IHK) with a focus on finance or insurance and training as a businessman for office management (IHK).

The University of Applied Sciences (FHDW), with a branch in Marburg , cooperates in the field of higher education. Interested parties can acquire five degrees at the same time:

For a full-time job, DVAG requires the following permits from the trade regulations:

The acquisition of the expertise required for § 34d GewO, as well as preparation for the expert examination of the financial investment broker according to § 34f GewO, takes place through the corresponding training in the DAV.

The current annual report shows that DVAG is investing over 75 million euros in training. The newly created § 34i GewO (brokerage of loans) is also a prerequisite for being able to work as a full-time financial advisor at DVAG.

Sports sponsorship and advertising

Michael Schumacher exhibition in Marburg (2016)

DVAG has been active in sports sponsoring since 1996 . She worked with numerous athletes, e. B. with Jürgen Klopp , Hansi Flick , Fabian Hambüchen , Britta Heidemann , Mick Schumacher and Joey Kelly .

In addition, there were sponsorship agreements with Joachim Löw , Otto Rehhagel , Paul Biedermann , Hubert Schwarz and Nico Hülkenberg in previous years . The company was the main sponsor of 1. FC Kaiserslautern for many years .

The company has been working with Michael Schumacher since 1997. Even after his serious skiing accident in December 2013, the existing sponsorship contract will be continued. In February 2016, on the occasion of the 20-year partnership, the Michael Schumacher exhibition was opened in Marburg; an exhibition that ended in December 2018.

There are partnerships with the German Fencing Federation , the national fencing team and some national football associations.

criticism

The business model of structured sales is controversial among some consumer advocates. After reunification , many accident and endowment insurance policies were sold in the new federal states , which, according to critics, sometimes did not meet the needs of those receiving advice.

Trial against book author

The DVAG tried to use an injunction to prohibit statements from a book whose author is a former employee. The competent higher regional court in Frankfurt am Main dismissed the DVAG's action by judgment of January 22, 1998. The Federal Court of Justice did not allow an appeal. A constitutional complaint filed by DVAG was not accepted for decision.

Judgment of the Stiftung Warentest

An investigation by Stiftung Warentest came to the following conclusion: “Ideally, good financial advice consists of a thorough analysis of the customer's status, suitable product proposals and clear information about the duration, risks and costs of the investments. In particular, the information on the cost of the products was often insufficient in the test. After such consultations, test customers had no idea how high the costs for the products offered are. Complete failures in the consultation only occurred in isolated cases. ”In the area of ​​product recommendation, a“ good ”was missed.

ZDF report

In a ZDF report , in a specific case, advice that was not tailored to the needs was criticized. It is also about the hierarchy of the company, which is structured in the form of a pyramid, and the contracts that are concluded with the investment advisors.

Entanglements with politics

The close ties with former politicians such as Helmut Kohl , Theo Waigel , Bernhard Vogel , Horst Teltschik , Friedrich Bohl , Udo Corts , Petra Roth and Guido Westerwelle are also viewed critically because of the possible influence on legislative initiatives (investor protection laws, etc.).

In the 2012 party donation report, published at the beginning of 2014, parliamentarian watch complained that the DVAG had donated large sums of money shortly before the decision on state-sponsored daily care allowance insurance . The decision brought the financial intermediaries the prospect of high commissions. In 2012 the donations to the CDU amounted to 320,000 euros, to the SPD 50,000, the donations to the FDP are still to be published. The DVAG had made donations of up to 50,000 euros, which did not have to be published immediately, but only at the beginning of 2014 as a total. This denomination was also criticized by Parliamentary Watch because the amount of the donations went unnoticed for a long time. In this regard, parliamentarian watch spoke of the "appearance of bought politics" and called for corporate donations to be completely prohibited.

Stefan Schabirosky's "campaign of revenge"

In August 2017, the former AWD employee Stefan Schabirosky published his book My Order: Rufmord , in which he claims to have initiated a smear campaign against Carsten Maschmeyer on behalf of DVAG . The DVAG “vehemently denied” to the dpa-German press agency that it was involved in the “character assassination” campaign and “firmly rejected” the allegations. Schabirosky offered DVAG information about the competitor and the intermediary industry , but this was well known among the commercial representatives. However, since he had “extensive industry knowledge in general and the industry was in a state of upheaval”, DVAG concluded a consultancy contract with him as a controller . Schabirosky then observed the European market for financial service providers for DVAG. He had acted independently and had neither instructions nor specific orders from DVAG. However, after “no usable work results” had been delivered and the “realization matured that Schabirosky was mainly conducting a personal campaign of revenge against the AWD at the expense of DVAG”, he was separated at the end of 2008. With this declaration, DVAG gave the impression that the consultancy contract with Schabirosky was a normal business transaction, as with any of its other commercial agents , whose brokerage activity was not specified in quantitative terms and consequently neither monitored nor which was controlled. As a result, she has not requested from Schabirosky a list of the commissioned service in five years, namely the "preparation of a written concept for a sales controlling" and even increased the monthly fee in 2006 to 7,500 euros and last year to 10,000 and 15,000 euros. Schabirosky states that from December 1, 2003 to December 31, 2008, he received fee payments of 513,500 euros plus VAT and around 25,000 euros in expenses from DVAG. However, since he saw himself being taken advantage of by the DVAG because he had allegedly been promised three million euros, in 2013 he had submitted applications for legal aid to an arbitration court in Lübben and the regional court in Frankfurt am Main , which were rejected as unfounded. DVAG has waived the demand for the agreed contractual penalty in the event of a breach of the duty of confidentiality in the amount of 30,000 euros.

Reporting in “Spiegel” and “Welt” 2019

In April 2019, Der Spiegel reported on the experiences of two former employees who talked about a system of advice in which the primary aim is not to sell financial products tailored to the customer, but exclusively products from partner companies such as Generali , Santander , Deutsche Bank , Commerzbank and HypoVereinsbank promise high commissions . Set up as a structured sales organization, the DVAG has a pyramid system in which those who are higher in the hierarchy receive part of the income generated by the employees below. According to the report, directors earned 400,000 euros a year. One of the dropouts mentioned in Spiegel, Ralf Scheffner, repeated his allegations against Deutsche Vermögensberatung in an interview with the newspaper WELT on May 17, 2019. The editor who conducted the interview summarized Scheffner's position in the words: “Scheffner, ein Industry insiders, comparing structural sales with a sect, speak of brainwashing . He says: Customers are just a waste product here, what counts is the personal advancement of the broker. And for many of them almost all means are right. "

Web links

Commons : Deutsche Vermögensberatung  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Wolfgang Dahm: Advising and selling: The methods of structural sales. Gabler Verlag, 1996, ISBN 978-3-409-14194-9 .

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b [1]
  2. ↑ Imprint Deutsche Vermögensberatungs AG - Registration number according to § 34d GewO: D-LYYB-BSPX5-17. In: dvag.de. Retrieved March 8, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Register of intermediaries: research. In: vermittlerregister.info. German Chamber of Commerce and Industry , accessed on March 8, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Annual Report 2019 .
  5. ↑ Annual Report 2018 [2]
  6. ↑ Annual Report 2018 [3]
  7. ↑ Homepage
  8. ↑ a b Annual Report 2016, p. 45
  9. ↑ DVAG will in future be the only sales channel for Aachen Münchener ( memento of July 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) of November 23, 2006.
  10. ↑ Swiss asset advice .
  11. ↑ Britta Heidemann continues to advertise DVAG Horizont from July 14, 2010.
  12. ↑ Overview of DVAG sports partners ( memento of the original from August 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dvag-teamblog.de
  13. ↑ 1. FC Kaiserslautern ( Memento from February 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ DVAG team blog - Michael Schumacher .
  15. ↑ DVAG - press release. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 16, 2010 ; accessed on August 16, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dvag-pressemitteilungen.de
  16. ^ Association of the Insured ( Memento of October 5, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) of November 29, 2001.
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Dahm: Advising and selling. The methods of structural sales. Gabler Verlag, 1996, ISBN 978-3-409-14194-9 .
  18. ↑ OLG Frankfurt am Main, January 22, 1998, Az. 6 U 237/96.
  19. ↑ BGH, decision of October 15, 1998, Az. I ZR 42/98.
  20. ↑ BVerfG, decision of February 18, 2004 , Az. 1 BvR 2121/98, full text.
  21. ↑ Financial intermediary - customization is a matter of luck - press release - Stiftung Warentest
  22. ↑ Advising and selling? Billion-dollar investment advice ( memento from July 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) in the ZDF media library.
  23. ↑ Foreign Minister gave a lecture at FDP major donors on parliament watch .
  24. ↑ Correctly posted. The political network of Deutsche Vermögensberatung (DVAG). (PDF; 80 kB) (No longer available online.) In: parliamentwatch.de . Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved on August 16, 2017 (representation of the DVAG's political network of relationships). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blog.abektivenwatch.de
  25. ↑ Stefan Schabirosky: My commission: Rufmord , Herbig-Verlag Stuttgart, 2017, ISBN 978-3-7766-2810-4 [4]
  26. ^ Dpa report in: DVAG versus AWD. Character assassination campaign against Carsten Maschmeyer? Revelation book causes a stir [5] in: stern from August 14, 2017
  27. ↑ Annual Report 2017 [6] , p. 67
  28. ↑ Schabirosky, p. 136ff. and 216ff.
  29. ↑ Schabirosky, p. 211
  30. ↑ Schabirosky, p. 186ff .; Thomas Tuma, Gertrud Hussla, Volker Votsmeier: DVAG versus AWD [7] in: Handelsblatt of August 13, 2017
  31. ↑ Nicolai Kwasniewski: Those who drop out from the DVAG asset consulting report: "It's like brainwashing". In: Spiegel Online. April 8, 2019, accessed January 20, 2020 .
  32. ↑ Lennart Pfahler: An industry like a sect. In: World Plus. May 17, 2019, accessed January 20, 2020 .


Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 30 ″  N , 8 ° 40 ′ 20 ″  E