Number of employees at full-time equivalent basis at Nordea 2014-2019

Was 2016 a peak-year for Nordea Bank Abp? According to the bank’s annual reports, it was. The bank’s number of full-time equivalent employees peaked in 2016, when there were around 31.6 thousand full-time employees working for Nordea. The following years, the number of employees declined to 29 thousand in 2019. But not only did the employee number peak in 2016, Nordea’s net profit did so too, at around 3.8 billion euros, before a significant decline in 2019. Same for the bank’s return on equity, which peaked at 12.3 percent in 2016, before a decline down to five percent in 2019.

 Nordea’s financial strength

     During the same observed period, the value of Nordea’s total assets generally declined , together with its operating income. However, during the same period Nordea’s financial strength continued to grow, when their Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio dropped significantly. This, the bank explains themselves in their annual report for 2018, is due to their move of headquarters from Stockholm to Helsinki, which occurred in October 2018, and therefore became a part of the Single Supervisory Mechanism.

Why the change of headquarters?

   Nordea’s motivation to change their headquarters from Stockholm to Helsinki had its base in the Banking Union. Finland is the only country among the banks’ home markets which was already a part of the Banking Union. Nordea had also their largest corporate and institution customer market in Finland in 2018, reaching 240 thousand customers. However, their largest private customer market in 2019 was Sweden, with around 3.6 million customers.