Nordea Bank Abp, the largest bank in the Nordic region, is raising deposit rates on accounts held by its personal banking clients in Finland.
Rates on checking accounts will be 0.25% starting in October, and many savings products will pay at least 3% interest already next month, the bank said in an emailed statement on Monday. It currently pays no interest on checking accounts in the country.
Nordea, like its peers, has benefited from a year of central bank interest-rate hikes that have boosted lenders’ traditional business as they raise rates on mortgages more than the interest they pay on deposit accounts, pocketing the difference. In addition to Finland, the bank serves retail clients in Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
While that’s led to outcries in some countries, no such debate has yet emerged in Nordea’s home in Finland. The most notable recent turmoil took place in Italy, where the government intervened by proposing a tax on banks, jolting markets.
Norway’s largest lender, DNB Bank ASA, in a separate statement announced that it is increasing the interest rates on home mortgages and deposits by up to a quarter of a percentage point, in a move that follows last week’s policy rate increase by the nation’s central bank.
In Sweden, Svenska Handelsbanken AB was first among the big banks when it introduced interest on current accounts in June. The move was subsequently mirrored by other lenders, and had been preceded by calls from the nation’s Minister for Finance, Elisabeth Svantesson.
(Adds details on Norway and Sweden in the last two paragraphs)
