Monitoring customers and transactions

Nordea has millions of customers and handles several billions of transactions every year. In order to monitor such high volumes and detect potential illegal activities, we have invested heavily in financial crime prevention tools. 

We have strengthened our IT systems, increased the number of employees dedicated to combating financial crime and reinforced training for all employees.

In our effort to detect and prevent financial crime, we conduct:

Screening

Customers and transactions are screened against relevant lists, for instance EU sanctions list. Screening takes place as part of the customer onboarding process and subsequently on an ongoing basis.

Monitoring

Customer relationships and transactions are continuously monitored to detect any unusual activity, transactions and behaviour.

Unusual activities, transactions and behaviour will trigger internal alerts and investigations. Suspicious activity, transactions and behaviour will be reported to relevant authorities. In such cases, we will also consider whether the customer relationship must be ended.

>3.5bn

transactions monitored in 2023 on a Nordic basis

>3,400

colleagues dedicated solely to preventing financial crime

All

 employees are trained in financial crime awareness

€1.5bn

spent on financial crime prevention since 2015

 

Suspicious activity reporting

A Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) is a report made by a financial institution about a suspicious transaction or activity to the local Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). In general, the criteria for suspicious activity reporting are: customer activity that does not make sense to Nordea or is unusual for that particular customer or appears to be done only to conceal another transaction that could indicate money laundering or terrorist financing. 

The report is filed with the specific country’s FIU, which is a specialised authority that collects and analyses transactions. All staff at Nordea have the responsibility to identify transactions and activities that may be suspicious or unusual, and these are reported to a designated unit that is responsible for investigating and reporting the suspicious transaction or activity. Nordea is not allowed to inform the customers or parties involved in the transaction that a SAR has been filed, nor can we share the information with other financial institutions.