The reason for the discriminatory treatment of Jewish-owned accounts by the German state and by German banks, and then the expropriation through official measures, was the intensified drive, which started at the end of 1937 to exclude Jews from the German economy. One motive lay in using as much of their wealth as could be extracted for the purposes of the Nazi state. Until 1938–39, there was actually no legal way for banks to know which of their customers were Jewish or “non-aryan” in the sense of the definitions of the 1935 Nuremberg racial law. Working on the basis of “Jewish-sounding” names alone was an unsatisfactory procedure and, in a number of cases, led to difficulties and complaints by customers.

Banks anticipated as well as simply responded to state policy. Soon after the passage of the Nuremberg laws, the Deutsche Bank's head office sent a circular letter to its branches, asking for lists of credits of over RM 20,000 to “non-aryan” businesses, and some bank branches went further and compiled lists of credit as well as debit customers. These lists, sketchy at first, became more comprehensive in the course of the subsequent three years. They were not compiled in every branch of the bank, and indeed there was no legal obligation or even any general official request for the banks to carry out such an anticipatory registration.

Before 1938, there existed some restrictions on some Jewish-owned accounts.