Nordea Bank

Nordea Bank Abp offers banking products and services in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and internationally. It operates through Personal Banking, Business Banking, Large Corporates and Institutions, and Asset and Wealth Management segments. 

The Personal Banking segment provides various financial services to household customers through internet and mobile banking, over the phone, online meetings, and branch offices. The Business Banking segment offers payments, cash management, cards, working capital management, and finance solutions to corporate and personal customers. The Large Corporates and Institutions segment provides financing, cash management and payment, investment banking, and securities services, as well as capital market products to corporate and institutional customers. The Asset and Wealth Management segment offers investment, savings, and risk management solutions to high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors. This segment also offers life and pensions products and services. The company was founded in 1820 and is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland.

Nordea's roots date to 1820 and Sparekassen for Kjøbenhavn og Omegn in Denmark, and a complete family tree of around 300 banks including some of the oldest banks in the Nordic region. This includes Wermlandsbanken of Sweden, Christiania Kreditkasse of Norway and Union Bank of Finland. Between 1997 and 2001, the Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian banks of Merita Bank, Nordbanken, Unidanmark, and Christiania Bank og Kreditkasse merged into the present-day Nordea.

Merita Group was formed in 1995 when UBF and Kansallis-Osake-Pankki merged. UBF was established, in 1862, at a time when there were no Limited Liability Companies Act or banking laws in Finland. Therefore, it was modelled after banking standards in other countries. UBF eventually merged with rivals Nordiska Aktiebanken in 1919 and Helsingin Osakepankki in 1986. KOP was originally founded in 1890 with its first branch at Aleksanterinkatu 17, in Helsinki. By 1913, KOP had become the second-largest commercial bank in Finland. The two banks, KOP and UBF, competed for the title of the largest bank in Finland for decades. KOP suffered large credit losses as a result of the Finnish banking crisis in the early 1990s. On 1 April 1995, it became a subsidiary of Merita Group in a direct share issue.

Nordbanken was formed in 1986 by a merger of two smaller private local banks, Uplandsbanken and Sundsvallsbanken, though it was the product of numerous original institutions. The oldest of the original Nordbanken constituent banks was Wermlandsbanken, which was founded in 1832. Nordbanken came under Swedish government control in 1992, following the Swedish banking crisis in the early 1990s, with the sale of its non-performing loans to the Swedish government and a significant reduction in personnel. Bad debts were transferred to the asset-management company Securum, which sold off the assets. At the time, the approach of establishing "good" and "bad" banks composed of corresponding assets was a novel resolution approach.

Merita Group merged with Nordbanken in 1997 forming MeritaNordbanken. The Solo internet-based banking operation of MeritaNordbanken was a global pioneer and leader in providing mobile and internet banking access in 1999. The bank reached 1 million internet banking customers in 1999 with 3 million log-ins and 3.7 million payments per month. Housing loans via Solo were introduced in 1999. MeritaNordbanken agreed to buy Unidanmark, Denmark's second-largest bank, in early 2000 creating the Nordic region's biggest financial institution with €186 billion in assets. The merged group had a banking market share of 20% in Sweden, 25% in Denmark and 40% in Finland and a combined workforce of 28,050. 

By the end of 2000, MeritaNordbanken had further merged with Christiania Bank og Kreditkasse of Norway, a process started in 1999 and changed its name to Nordea. Christiania Bank had also been impacted severely during the banking crisis in the early 1990s, with Nordea acquiring the bank from the Norwegian Government Bank Investment Fund with a 35% share. Nordea expanded into Poland, the Baltics and Russia in the early 2000s, with 2% of total revenues from the Poland and Baltics region. Nordea divested Polish operations in 2013, with the sale to PKO Bank Polski for €694 million. 

By the end of 2014, lending in the Baltics was €8.2 billion and in Russia €4.5 billion. During the period 2013-2017 exposure to the Russian market was reduced by 63%. In 2016, Luminor was formed by a merger of Nordea's and DNB's operations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania creating the third-largest Baltic regional bank with assets of €15 billion and a market share of 16.4%. Luminor was sold to Blackstone, with Nordea and DNB retaining each initially a 20% share. However, the full divestment was completed in 2019. Exit from the Russian, Baltic and Polish markets was part of Nordea's de-risking strategy, which also included reduced exposures to some sectors. 

Nordea was one of the Nordic banks, including Danske Bank, SEB and Swedbank, allegedly involved in the money laundering scandal, involving ex-Soviet states, that emerged in 2017. Nordea announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from Stockholm, Sweden to Helsinki, Finland in September 2017. The re-domiciliation of Nordea to Finland put it within the supervision of the European Central Bank and within the European Union's banking union. In October 2018, Nordea completed the move of its corporate headquarters to Helsinki, Finland.

“Our purpose and values link our daily efforts to help our customers fulfil their dreams and aspirations and our commitment to work for the greater good and be a sustainable part of the societies in which we operate.”

“We enable dreams and aspirations for a greater good.”