In an era where personalisation is king, Nordea is taking the next steps to revitalise the banking experience. With 97% of all customer interactions now happening digitally, the bank is ready to create truly seamless and individual services. “We can look forward to a bank that is even better equipped to care about your financial well-being,” says Head of One Digital Malthe Falck.
“A trend we're looking into is hyper-personalisation," explains Malthe Falck, new Head of One Digital at Nordea. "It's about creating the ultimate 1:1 experience, tailored exactly to the individual customer.”
The trend is driven by Nordea’s customers and their behaviour, as they are used to suggestions on what to see, listen to or buy next in most digital channels. Customers ask for services that are focused on them and what they need here and now. Over the past few years Nordea has made significant progress in processing what it knows about its customers. This allows the bank to offer more relevant and personalised services and communication across all digital channels and is also ensuring a seamless experience.
“We now have an updated picture of what you're interested in, what's going on in your life, and how your transactions are changing,” explains Malthe Falck. “This understanding enables us to deliver personalised content through various channels, including our mobile bank, emails and even social media.” He adds:
“While full hyper-personalisation is still on the horizon, our customers are already experiencing more tailored content. We will make sure that the ‘brain’ we have built around you decides what you should be met with in each channel based on your needs and preferences, and we'll see less thinking in segments over time,” he predicts. “You can be a business owner and, at the same time, a parent managing your kid’s account – and that we would like to reflect in our digital touch points. It’s about flipping the perspective and wrapping our solutions around you.”
The ultimate goal of this personalisation is to enhance customers' financial well-being. We want to share our expertise and provide tailored advice on everything from major life events to daily spending habits.
To boost the personalised experience, Nordea will in the future harness the power of artificial intelligence to create digital content at high speed. With the help of AI, it is possible to create much more relevant, targeted and varied content far faster than any human being could do. Malthe Falck explains:
“If you are a homeowner, we want, for example, to come up with a pretty good estimate of how much buffer you need to cope with unforeseen expenses like a leaky roof or a broken pipe. And advise you on it in your preferred channel and tone of voice. Similarly, if you are a young couple, we want to advise on what it costs to move in together or get married and when you need to start saving. But it can also be smaller things, such as saving up for a holiday or reducing café spending.”
“The ultimate goal of this personalisation is to enhance customers' financial well-being. We want to share our expertise and provide tailored advice on everything from major life events to daily spending habits. It's about helping you to realise your dreams as quickly and easily as possible and make you feel secure and in control of your financial situation.”
“Today, Nordea customers can do more or less everything themselves, anytime and anywhere, with our digital solutions, but managing your daily finances should be even more intuitive, interactive and fun in the future,” Malthe Falck stresses:
“It’s not you who should manage our systems: it’s us who should give you a motivating and enriched experience. It should be a dialogue in everyday language, digitally assisted if you prefer, that makes it even clearer how you can reach your goals. You can start investing with Nora, our digital investment adviser, in the evening and then switch to a meeting with a human adviser on best investment strategies.”
Recognising that finances often extend beyond the individual, Nordea is also looking into developing features to support family financial management.
“We want to make it easier for you to teach your children how to manage their money, and it should also be easier for you to help, for example, your elderly parents. We want to make it simpler to pass on tasks to someone you trust. Again, it’s about being in control and feeling financially safe – and this applies not only to you yourself, but also to your loved ones,” Malthe Falck explains.
Customer satisfaction with our digital services remains high, with the mobile app averaging over 4 out of 5 stars in the Apple and Google Play app stores in all four Nordic countries at the end of 2024.
Our position within digital banking is also well recognised in external benchmarks. We were named best bank in several categories in Global Finance’s 2024 Digital Bank Awards.
As Nordea moves forward with innovations and digital development, customers’ safety and security remain a core commitment.
“To be a safe and trusted financial partner, we must use all our experience understanding and managing risks. At Nordea, it will always be clear who you are talking to, and just as you need to identify yourself to us today with your personal ID, we may also need to be better at identifying ourselves to you in the future. As a bank, we must lean in to new technologies and be where customers are – but we will do this stepwise and in a controlled and transparent way.”
“Right now, we are mostly focusing on how we can use the new opportunities to make internal processes more efficient, so we can free up time for customers and the customer experience. There will be time-consuming coding work that can be solved with artificial intelligence, so our developers can make an even better banking app. And when you call us, real-time insights will in the future help ensure that our teams are both equipped with the latest information and up to speed on recent interactions, so you can be met with far fewer questions and faster answers.”
“Our way of taking the first steps is to ensure that there is still a human in the loop. It's about adding in artificial intelligence where there is a lot of process work, so our people can focus on the areas where they make the biggest difference for customers,” Malthe Falck concludes.