The Quotes are Powered By Forexpros, the Forex, Futures, and Stock Markets Portal.

Swedish giant bank accused of discriminating against poor customers in Norway

Friday, 19 April 2013

Swedish bank SEB terminates the accounts of 7000 Norwegian customers. The reason is that they have too little money in their accounts or as a Norwegian paper puts it, they are not millionaires.
During the week SEB sent an email to the poor customers headed "Termination of customer relationship."

In the e-mail, SEB wrote that it was restructuring its profile to become more as an investment bank and therefore will not be able to offer the same services as being offered today.
Along that line, interest on deposited money drops to 0.1 percent for amounts less than Nkr1 million. Customers do not need to pay the otherwise mandatory fee of $50 for closing the account, thus indicating that they are welcome to leave the bank.
SEB Norway's CEO, William Paus countered and told the Norwegian business daily Dagens Næringsliv that the wording of the letter was "probably somewhat oversimplified. It would have been more correct to write that we are shaping our business towards greater wealth management."
The communications manager on his part call the mail a "slip". "It should never have been issued in this format. There we apologize. It would obviously have gone through the information department for review. It was a breach of internal procedures..."
SEB in Norway will now concentrate on fewer and wealthier customers. The minimum requirement for having an account with the bank there is a Nkr 1 million, but ideally, the customer must have at least Nkr25 million in placement capacity.
"We want to be good at serving the 500 richest people in Norway, and our research shows that on average they have several hundred of million in assets. These customers have access to all of our products and services in the Investment Bank, in addition to savings services and legal services, "said SEB Norway Chef William Pause to Dagens Næringsliv.

"Since we only had a bank branch in the main office at Aker Brygge. Last year we chose to concentrate on a more limited group of customers. The decision to cut interest rates on small deposits are part of this," said Paus.
By Scancomark.com Team

We welcome your contribution. Did you find anything wrong with this article? Do you want to contribute to our news network? Do have a news tip or assist us with a correction