Nordea Bank targets 500 bankers in Finland job cuts

Bloomberg

Nordea Bank AB will approach about 500 employees in Finland
as it starts acting on a program
announced in October to cut
thousands of jobs.
The biggest Nordic bank will ax about 420 jobs and move another 50 to Estonia and Poland, Nordea said on its website. The reductions are equivalent to about 6 percent of its workforce in the country. About 200 Finnish employees will retire in 2018, the bank said.
Nordea said in October it needs to cut 6,000 jobs group-wide, of which 4,000 are full-time positions, as part of its goal to go digital. The program is intended to run over four years, though Swedish unions have said their indications suggest most of the cuts will have happened by 2019.
The Finnish cuts will mostly target employees working in retail and corporate banking, as well as back office functions and people employed in Nordea’s markets unit. The “co-determination talks” with staff in Finland are due to end in February, according to Nordea.
Nordea plans to focus on easy to use digital services and said more customer-service work needs to take place in the evenings and weekends, which unions in Finland have resisted in the past. It also seeks a flatter organization.
The Nousu union, which represents the Finnish employees, called the talks the first round and said there are “more reductions to come.” “A shift in the industry and digital transformation serve as excuses for excessive and premature personnel cuts and weaker services,” shop steward Paula Hopponen said. “Large shareholders’
wallets have grown thicker and
in their greed they make the staff and clients pay.”