In January, the members of the Association Council received a dossier of around 100 pages, which also contained allegations of breaches of governance and compliance. Individual members of the Executive Board and Association Council as well as senior employees of the association were implicated. We wanted to have every single allegation fully investigated from the outside and not provide any status reports until the audit had been completed. This was complex and took a lot of time. Now it is clear: nothing of substance remains.

As the Association Council, we commissioned the Grüter law firm.

Let me be clear: Mr Rega is not really to be blamed for anything. None of the things that concerned him were true in any way. That was a personal decision by Mr Rega. He said he wanted to resign and leave the Board. We regretted this, as Mr Rega has had a strong influence on the association over the years and has also developed the association in a different direction and made it more entrepreneurial. But we have to respect his decision to step down.

Absolutely.

I don't think there's any point in going into detail. After all, personal rights must be protected. As I said, there was a relatively extensive dossier that we looked at in detail. I'm not going to comment on who said what and where. For us, the issue is now closed. And the key realisation is that these allegations have not been substantiated.

Of course there was unrest, there's no need to beat about the bush. However, over the past few weeks I have gained the impression that things have calmed down a lot. We wanted to have everything done by the Association's highest organisation, the Verbandstag, and we will manage that. I believe that the cooperative group will quickly calm down again and get back to business as usual. At the latest when we demonstrate that the accusations that have been levelled are unfounded.

We didn't have a management vacuum. We have a functioning Board of Directors with Peter Götz, Katja Lewalter-Düssel and Marco Schulz leading the association.

Yes, Hoeck is well known in the cooperative family, has a good understanding of the primary cooperative institutions, knows our philosophy and has an entrepreneurial spirit. He also fits in well with the Management Board team on a personal level. I believe this will work very well.

We also got off to a good start this year. The incidents at the bank have of course kept us busy, but it has not paralysed the association or the Awado Group, as has sometimes been suggested.

First of all, Marija Kolak, President of the Federal Association of German Cooperative Banks, said that we do not have excessive risks in our Group. I would endorse that. If a bank has to be supported, it is a bit more media-effective these days than it used to be. I can remember the years when we had far more banks in need of restructuring. Incidentally, the cooperative association is subject to professional confidentiality obligations and will never comment on individual institutions to the public.

Basically, when you reorganise a bank, you naturally proceed very cautiously and also overestimate risks. A lot of risk provisions are therefore cancelled out again. That's why you shouldn't be blinded by the figures that are being publicised. I don't believe that the losses will end up being that high. But even if they were, the Group could withstand it. We have some one-sided business models, which can of course get into difficulties if the market changes. But the protection scheme can step in and rescue institutions in case of doubt. It is clear that we have to learn from every case and that we may not always assess everything correctly in the respective situation and may have judged things differently in hindsight. However, I do not believe that we have a structural problem in the cooperative family. It is very stable.

Of course. Governance is also part of the audits, and it is the task of the supervisory board of each individual bank to look at the quality of the management board. The Genoverband also looks at this in its audits and discusses it with the supervisory boards.

For the audits, it means looking at whether the issues and errors that have been identified could possibly also occur in other institutions. The topic of management audits is also always on the agenda of a statutory audit. There is also a close dialogue with BaFin and the Bundesbank, which tell the auditing associations which audit priorities they would like to see.

First of all, as a cooperative auditing association, the Genoverband has a statutory task that is clearly defined, so there is not much discussion. This is the statutory audit that we have to carry out to a certain extent. Member orientation is at the centre of our justification for existence as a cooperative association. In addition, it is important to focus on the needs of our customers. It is important to us that the association family acts entrepreneurially, so what it does makes economic sense. However, maximising profits is not our goal.

We offer the services that our members expect and need. We don't have the goal of having a certain number of employees or a certain sales volume. But there is no question that you can only do certain things efficiently if you have a certain size. And we are also very interested in entering into co-operations with other associations.

We have a very successful co-operation with the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative Association, the joint educational institution Geno Akademie. It just makes sense to join forces. One big issue that is burning on my mind personally is audit software. All auditing associations are actually thinking about further developing their auditing software so that they can also use artificial intelligence. It is clear to me, and the cooperative associations in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg are of the same opinion, that it makes sense to take a joint approach here. Why should each association develop its own auditing software and incur three times the costs? And there will also be a merger here and there, because there are still smaller auditing associations that may be looking for a connection. We are open to that.

As a general rule, a marriage always requires mutual consent. If someone talks to us, we can imagine merging. But we have not set ourselves the goal of merging with Weser-Ems or with the Bavarian Co-operative Association. When the time is ripe and the parties involved, the members, decide to pursue a merger, we will be ready to talk.

They are yet to be published, but one thing can be said: it was a very successful year for our organisation. With the exception of the consulting business, we have at least achieved or even exceeded our targets in all areas.

It was a deficit that we had factored in because we had invested. The salary costs were not yet offset by any or only a few sales. With the approval of the Association Council, the Executive Board decided to look for a team of people with the combined skills to provide complex advice to banks. We have found such a team, it started with us and is still here, apart from Mr Stegmüller. With this strategic decision, it was clear that we would initially be at a loss. After all, it naturally takes some time from the moment an order is placed to the moment sales can be invoiced.

We have around 50 people. More than half of the team is new. This year, we will already be moving towards zero in Banking Consultancy and next year, we plan to generate a positive result. That was our goal, even if we would perhaps have liked it to be a little quicker. Of course, the turbulence in the association has not exactly helped us, as some banks have waited to see how things will develop for us. But it's nothing existential and doesn't affect the entire Awado Group, which comprises more than just banking consultancy, for example auditing and tax, legal and communications consultancy, all of which are running very successfully. The banking consultancy, which is currently being set up, therefore only accounts for a very small proportion of the 2,500 employees in the Genoverband.

Our key figure is not to reach 100 people or 150. We want to cover the needs of our members and are experiencing a time of major change for the banks. They need support in many different areas. For example, consulting firms are very often commissioned in the course of mergers, and we would like to deepen our existing strategy consulting services.

In terms of legal and regulatory changes, for example the implementation of Dora, the EU regulation to strengthen the IT security of banks. We are not interested in having a particularly large number of employees, but rather in meeting demand and preventing too much knowledge about the cooperative family from flowing away. Whenever an external consultancy firm is engaged, knowledge leaves the organisation. Ultimately, you have to let them take a look into your engine room if you want them to perform well. We are therefore endeavouring to keep more consulting services within the Group.

It was not offered from a single source, but rather there was already a separation. And there has to be. At the beginning of an audit, we always have to document that the auditor does not provide any other services for the same organisation. So there is a clear separation within the association. I also assume that we are a long way from our self-confident comrades being afraid that the association could force them to do anything. Incidentally, there must be no direct link between the deficiencies identified in an audit and the counselling. I know that the board members are very careful to ensure that this does not happen. It would also be very, very critical in terms of professional law.

About the person

Christoph Ochs has been head of the Genoverband for almost three months. He succeeded Peter Hanker, who resigned following internal accusations. The supervisory body of the association, which represents 2,600 cooperatives, including around 300 credit cooperatives, has a total of 28 representatives. Ochs has been a member of the Association Council since 2023 and also sat on the Audit Committee. He holds other positions within the cooperative network, such as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Raiffeisen Waren-Zentrale Rhein-Main since 2014.

The 57-year-old describes himself as a veteran of the co-operative sector, having worked there for almost his entire professional life, namely for 37 years - with the exception of one year when he moved to a private bank. Ochs has been a member of the Board of Management since the age of 34, initially at Volksbank Eifel Mitte and later at VR Bank Südpfalz. Since 2009, he has headed the bank located in Landau in der Pfalz.

Ochs is the father of three grown-up daughters and lives in a wine-growing village near Landau. When his limited time allows, he plays golf or goes on tours in his old-timer.