The largest Nordic bank, Nordea, announced last Monday that a new unit will be established on May 1, responsible for investment and pension across the group.

The unit, which will be named Solutions & Advisory Centre, necessitates that 23 jobs are cut from the extant unit Savings & Wealth Offerings. Eight of the jobs are in Denmark.

"Nordea is a big group, so fortunately we know from experience that many new opportunities will emerge, and we expect that we can offer many of these people a new job in Nordea, either with their current competences or with some form of competence development," says Anne Buchardt, head of Savings and Pension in Nordea Denmark, to FWAM.

Nordea states that the affected employees will be enrolled in Nordea's job matching process in an attempt to find new opportunities for them in the organization. Buchardt adds that it is not a specific group of employees in question.

"You can't say that it's a specific job function. It's a consequence of the fact that we are restructuring the organization from being somewhat local to a more Nordic profile with more focus on digitalization," says Buchardt.

Expanding the investment platform

Even though Nordea is cutting jobs, Buchardt says that this is a digital upgrade in savings and investment. It means that Nordea is going to expand its investment platform and use more robotic technology.

"The new organization will be responsible for investment and pension across all of Nordea. The intention is to strengthen the digital development and make our organization more effective," says Buchardt.

Why is a new unit necessary?

"The world is constantly evolving, and the digital measures that our clients request require a lot of resources. For this reason, it is all the more important that we make sure to develop things with the all of the group's needs in mind, making sure that we grow stronger."

What other changes will come with this operation?

"We are changing the organization into one with a strongly Nordic basis, so we develop things once and then adjust them to the national markets. Previously, we developed in four different places – now we choose to limit that to one," says Buchardt.

English Edit: Marie Honoré