Largest banks in Sweden 2020, by assets

As of October 2018, the formerly largest bank based in Sweden, Nordea Bank Abp, chose to move their headquarters from Stockholm to Helsinki. This meant that the number of “storbanker” (large chartered banks) based in Sweden was down to three: Handelsbanken, SEB and Swedbank. Largest of these banks was Handelsbanken, whose total asset value peaked at over 3.13 trillion Swedish kronor in 2020.

 Loans of “storbanker”

   The three Swedish large banks mentioned above lend 55 percent of the total loans to households and non-financial institutions in Sweden in 2021. Foreign banks lend almost 20 percent that year, which is a large share compared to what previously used to be around seven percent. The reason for this is that Nordea counts as a foreign bank in the statistics for 2018, after their change of headquarters, but continued having many customers in Sweden.

Why did Nordea move to Helsinki?

  The decision of moving Nordea Bank’s headquarters from Stockholm to Helsinki was motivated by Finland already being a member of the Banking Union, as the only country of Nordea’s home market to be. The bank assumed it to be profitable for them to follow the same regulatory framework as other banks in the Banking Union. Nordea’s household customer base was largest in Sweden, reaching 3.6 million. Though, their corporate customer market was the large in Finland. In 2021, their market penetration rate for large corporations in Finland reached 100 percent.