Nordea is to relocate a number of staff into Stockholm Fintech Hub to collaborate on-site with startups from across Sweden.
Launched in November 2016, Stockholm Fintech Hub is home to 200 startups and other large tech players like IBM and Microsoft.
Having already cemented relationships with similar spaces in Oslo, Helsinki and Copenhagen, Nordea's participation in the Swedish hub rounds off the bank's connections to the startup ecosystem across Scandinavia,
"It is critical for us to be where innovation is happening," says Ewan Macleod, head of digital at Nordea. "As a big bank, we are constantly forced to hit the ground running so we can develop the right technologies and the right services for our customer quickly. What we're realising is that we don't have to do this alone; there is an emerging financial services ecosystem we can tap into."
Nordea is keen to develop relationships with startups and third party developers as part of a wide-ranging digital transformation programme. Last year the bank set up a Group Digital Unit to oversee progress, and in March previewed the arrival of a banking developer portal, where fintechs and other external developers are invited to create new products and services.
During Nordea’s 2017 first-quarter earnings presentation last week, CEO Casper von Koskull said there were some “exciting names” among the approximately 600 users who have pre-registered, including “multinational, global names”.