aws

Walcherstraße 11A
1020 Vienna
Austria

+43 1501750
+43 150175900
office@awsg.at
http://www.awsg.at

aws

Austria Wirtschaftsservice Gesellschaft mbH (aws) is the Austrian federal promotional institution. It assists companies (mainly SMEs and Start-ups) in their implementation of innovative or growth-oriented projects by issuing individual guarantees, granting loans and awarding grants. In addition, aws provides among others, leasing guarantees, advisory services as well as equity and quasi-equity products.

aws was founded in 1954 and is 100% held by the federal government. It is supervised on the national level and does not have a banking license.

aws’ predecessor institution Bürges was the very first financial institution to use an EIF counter-guarantee in 1998 and today, aws intermediates COSME and InnovFin and will do so with InvestEU in the very near future.

As of end-2021 aws had an outstanding guarantee volume of almost bEUR 4.8 (which is nearly 4 times its pre-covid volume) and supported more than 21k SMEs. It has between 350 and 400 employees.

AECM accession year1995
Legal formLimited company
OwnershipPublic
Geographical and sectoral coverageNational
All sectors except for agriculture and tourism
ProductsCredit guarantees, Leasing guarantees, Mezzanine financing guarantees, Subsidised loans, Advisory services, Mezzanine financing, Mediation services, Venture capital, Grants, SME investment support
Counter-guaranteeNational and EU (COSME, InnovFin)

Vienna/Brussels, 2nd September 2022