Headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, Nordea Bank Abp is one of the Top banking groups of Europe. It offers products and services like personal banking, commercial and business banking, wholesale banking and asset and wealth management. The merge or the product of successful banks Nordic banks Unibank, Merita Bank, Nordbanken and Christiania Bank during the late 1990s, is the Nordea Group of banks tracing its origins back to 200 years. The group serves more than 9 million private, corporate and etail customers with its home markets being Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden as well as operations in 16 countries outside of the Nordic region. Presenting an income of EUR 8.5 billion and total assets of EUR 554.8 billion in 2019, the bank became one of the Europe’s top 10 financial institutions. Based on market capitalization, Nordea has been granted a coveted AA rating for its stability which a feather in their cap. The banking group has won multiple awards in recognition of its achievements in areas such as innovation, digital offerings to retail customers, private banking and investment banking as well as a strong position in the small- and mid-size corporate segment. Its shares are traded on Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen stock exchanges. A leader in sustainability, Nordea is committed to doing its part to conserve the resources for the future generations.
Nordea’s president and chief executive officer, Mr. Frank Vang-Jensen shared some insights on how the bank was tackling the current circumstances. He said that this crisis gave the bank a purpose of enabling dreams and everyday aspirations for a greater good. The bank went from the idea of decision to action and solved the challenges thrown at them. The focus was set on supporting the customers from the beginning of the pandemic which helped them maintain the relationship with their customers on the strong basis of trust. Finding new ways of leading, being flexible and staying attentive was another way of tackling. The target was and is to help our customers in their work with sustainability. Green corporate loans and mortgage loans are good examples of Nordea’s initiatives to enable our customers to contribute to a more sustainable future. The main difference from conventional corporate loans is that the entire chain is green. The bank believes that sustainability is not just products and services they offer but It is the way of they work , it is all about our actions, from environmentally friendly ways of using resources to improving diversity and inclusion throughout the bank.
Nordea’s funds, was recently awarded excellent scores by the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) for its overall sustainability strategy and governance. On asked about the secret behind this , Mr. Jensen shared that having a good fund ,sustainable or not does matter if it does not have a valuable asset manager who has the clear investment objective and a solid investment process. He said, “Customers have entrusted us with more than 69 billion euro in our products with elevated ESG, and in our flagship STARS products, we have seen a growth of 25 percent since the start of the year (2020). These numbers bring us into the world’s top 10 when we measure flow to sustainable products.” It is always important to have a customer perspective, while they express a desire to become more sustainable throughout their savings while still expecting us to give them excellent risk-adjusted returns and that has been the bank’s mission lately.
Having the main objective of delivering the priorities and promises, requires passion to serve the customers and to relentlessly drive forward has made the banking group not lose its place at the top!
