Nordea’s robo-adviser Nora picks up the pace
Nordea’s robo-adviser Nora is making headway in its ambitions to offer investment advice to humanity.
Nora was launched last month
In an interview with Bloomberg, Katja Bergqvist, co-head of Nordea’s wealth management division in Stockholm, says Nora, which was launched last month, has already been asked to start investment processes equivalent to 4% of the roughly 500,000 people who get savings advice from the bank each year.
Nordea wants to use Nora to help expand that figure to about two million people in the next two to three years.
According to Bloomberg, after Nora’s commercial launch in April, 20,000 processes have been started via the service. Of those, more than 3,000 resulted in completed transactions, with invested capital now at $2.6 million.
Nordea wants Nora to reach 50,000 customers and $34.2 million in capital this year. The bank had total assets under management of $390 billion, at the end of last year.
“While we’re aware that we’re building something from scratch and that it will take some time to build capital, Nora is doubling its capital and number of customers every six weeks,” says Bergqvist.
Like almost every bank, Nordea is going full throttle on its digital dream, with CEO Casper von Koskull planning 6,000 job cuts as the bank relies less on humans and more on automation.
Nordea has teamed up with Apple Pay for its digital payments offering, saying last year that it attracted record client demand.
Earlier this month, Nordea unleashed its Connect payment solution to help the online buying experience for consumers and merchants.
According to the bank, for online consumers they can use Nordea Connect to choose the payment method they desire: Swish, Siirto, ePayments (Finland) and “all major bankcards” are accepted.
The bank is also progressing with its enterprise-wide technology overhaul. The bank says new savings and term deposit accounts for Finnish household customers are now being opened on the new core banking platform, Temenos’ T24.
Bloomberg reminds us that in the race to get ahead, some banks are learning that their automated services don’t always fully comply with regulatory standards.
Danske Bank, the biggest lender in Denmark, was recently rapped over the knuckles by the regulator there for failing to ensure that its robo-adviser, June, was living up to investor-protection rules.
Bergqvist says Nordea has studied the Danske case to learn from it, and plans to introduce Nora in Denmark this quarter.
Nordea is presently offering its robo-adviser to clients in Sweden and is in the process of rolling out the service in Finland. The bank expects to have Nora up and running in Norway before the summer, Bergqvist says.
Nordea recently reorganised its wealth management business to step up its focus on digital services, a move that saw Bergqvist become co-head of the wealth unit together with Gustaf Unger. As part of that reorganisation, Nordea created a new unit called Digital Wealth.
“We want to push digital development even more,” Bergqvist adds. She says that includes “cooperating with fintech companies and starting partnerships”.
