Continued strong growth across the Nordics

The autumn season has started with many encouraging developments in the Nordic region. Societies have been reopening and millions of people have been able to resume a more normal way of life. At Nordea we have started returning to our offices. Personally, I have enjoyed seeing colleagues and meeting with our customers face to face. It’s the part of my job I enjoy the most.

In the third quarter we delivered a strong performance. Mortgage lending volumes increased by 6%, year on year. It was especially encouraging to see lending to small and medium-sized enterprises increase by 9%. Assets under management increased by 21% to an all-time high of 393 billion euro. Operating profit increased by 17%, despite more challenging financial markets.

Our capital position remains very strong. This month we paid a total of 2.9 billion euro in dividends to our shareholders, who include more than 500,000 private individuals and several pension funds across the Nordic countries. Our dividends will give a boost to the Nordic economies and support the post-pandemic economic recovery. We have also received supervisory approval for a share buy-back programme, which we will start this month.

In the third quarter we continued to implement our sustainability plan, which is an integrated part of our strategy. We updated our Guideline for fossil fuel-based industries with new requirements and recommendations. We have further developed our digital offering, focusing on speed and availability, and have used our expertise to provide strong and personal service. This quarter, our efforts delivered a 7% increase in mobile bank users.

During the past two years we have consistently delivered on our key priorities: to create great customer experiences, drive income growth initiatives and optimise operational efficiency. This has led to a solid development in our financial performance, which in turn has enabled us to make decisive progress towards our 2022 financial targets.

We are now preparing updates to our financial targets, and intend to publish them in February 2022. Our targets will be updated, but our direction as a bank is not going to change. For more than 200 years we’ve played a key role in supporting and growing the Nordic economies. That will be our role going forward as well.

We want to be a bank that is personal, no matter where or how we meet with our customers. We want to be a responsible bank, showing that we deeply care about gaining our customers’ trust and supporting a sustainable future. And we are expert at what we do.

/Frank Vang-Jensen, President and Group CEO