The History of Wüstenrot in Austria: From 1925 to a Digital All-Finance Group

Few Austrian financial brands have a history as long as Wüstenrot's. Here is the story in brief.

Timeline

• 30 November 1925 — Siegfried Gmelin gives a talk in Salzburg on the building savings idea. The same year he founds the Bausparkasse der Gemeinschaft der Freunde Wüstenrot — Austria's first building society.
• 1930 — Independent foundation as a registered cooperative.
• November 1976 — Wüstenrot Versicherungs-AG is founded as a subsidiary of the building society.
• 1990s — Expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.
• 1997 — The building society converts from a cooperative into a stock corporation (AG).
• 2005 — The Salzburg headquarters is fully renovated and redesigned.
• June 2023 — The digital Wüstenrot Bank goes live; the group focuses on Austria and gradually withdraws from the CEE region.

Owner

The group is owned by the Wüstenrot Wohnungswirtschaft eGen, a cooperative based in Salzburg.

Today

Wüstenrot is one of Austria's larger building societies and positions itself as an all-finance provider. The digital service portal is the newest chapter of that story.

Pentoblog is an independent publication and is not affiliated with Wüstenrot. For account-specific questions contact Wüstenrot directly through its official website.