Six Nordic Banks are launching a ‘Know Your Customer’ data platform as a joint venture to help prevent financial crime.
The venture includes Danske Bank A/S, DNB Bank ASA, Nordea Bank Abp, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB, Svenska Handelsbanken AB and Swedbank AB as equal shareholders.
The business has received the approval of the European Commission to ensure it accords with merger control rules.
The company will be autonomous and offer KYC services to all customers. It will initially cover large and medium-sized companies based in the Nordic region. The full commercial launch is next year.
Fredrik Millde, interim CEO of the Nordic KYC platform says: “The collaboration between all banks has been both effective and successful. Together, we have in a short period of time worked on a Nordic KYC utility standard for compliant KYC information and explored alternatives for a future digital solution. As we have now received the green light from the European Commission, we are ready to move forward with our plans.”
“The banks’ top priority in collaborating has been to develop a Nordic platform with standardised processes for handling KYC data. The objective is to improve customer experience by simplifying the KYC processes for corporate customers while strengthening financial crime prevention in the Nordics.”
The announcement comes as one of the banks involved, Danske Bank, issued a second profits warning as it grapples with the fallout from a huge money laundering scandal.
In 2018, Danske said it had channelled €200bn of what turned out to be suspicious payments through its Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.
The bank said on Monday it expects full-year net profit of 13 to 15bn Danish crowns down from 14bn to 16bn (€1.74bn to €2.02bn down from €1.88 bn to €2.14 bn).
Discussing the profits warning, Danske chief financial officer Christian Baltzer said: “This development is driven mainly by margin pressure and conditions in the financial markets, as evidenced by the weak trading income in the second quarter. In addition, we have higher costs for compliance and anti-money laundering activities.”
