German regional bank serving savings banks and institutional clients across Central Europe
Helaba is a €167B regional bank headquartered in Frankfurt, operating as a central institution for savings banks across four German states while serving corporates, institutional investors, and retail customers. The tech stack reveals a traditional SAP-heavy banking infrastructure (SAP FI-SL, S/4HANA, SuccessFactors, Fiori) undergoing gradual modernization—adopting S/4HANA while retiring COBOL and Adabas—paired with newer stream-processing layers (Kafka, Flink) for real-time data. Active hiring leans heavily toward finance roles (51 of 97 open positions) and engineering (18), with project focus split between regulatory compliance, digital transformation, and ESG implementation, suggesting a mid-cycle shift from legacy banking infrastructure toward sustainable finance operations.
Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen is a public-law banking institution with approximately 6,100 employees operating as the central bank for savings banks in Hessen, Thüringen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, and Brandenburg—serving 40% of all German savings banks. Beyond wholesale banking for savings institutions, it serves corporates, institutional investors, and retail customers through subsidiaries including Frankfurter Sparkasse (regional retail leader), 1822direkt (direct banking), Landesbausparkasse Hessen-Thüringen (building savings leader), and WIBank (public development finance). The bank offers comprehensive financial services spanning corporate and markets, retail, asset management, real estate finance, and public infrastructure funding.
Helaba runs a SAP-centric stack: SAP S/4HANA, SAP FI-SL, SAP HANA Studio, SAP SuccessFactors, Fiori, with Java, C#, SQL, and Python for custom applications. Streaming and analytics via Apache Kafka, Flink, Informatica, Power BI. Currently migrating off COBOL and Adabas.
Key projects include digital transformation and S/4HANA modernization, digitalizing funding and credit decision processes, ESG IT implementation and real estate finance ESG strategy, credit risk model development (PD/LGD estimation under IFRS 9), process automation, and regulatory compliance (MaRisk, valuation standards).
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