Allianz Real Estate to ramp up European lending efforts

Allianz Real Estate plans to ramp up its efforts in the European lending space in the future, CEO Olivier Piani said on Wednesday at the Expo Real trade fair in Munich.

'We are making strong efforts on the debt front. We have been recruiting more people for the French and German businesses. We want to do what we have been doing for years in the US, where insurance companies account for a 20-30% share of the lending market,' Piani said. 'The only reason why we didn’t do it before is that margins were too low in Europe due to competition from the banking community,' he added.

Allianz intends to double its global real estate loan portfolio from EUR 6 bn in 2012 to EUR 12 bn in the next three to five years, Piani noted. 'We are going to close this year with a EUR 1 bn investment in property lending in Europe,' Piani said. At present the bulk of the portfolio is in the US.

In France, the company has recently hired Carole Tran Van Lieu from Société Générale to head the real estate debt team. Earlier this year it underwrote its first loan with the origination of a EUR 275 mln loan in a joint venture with banking group Société Générale.

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