Nordea Bank Continues to Lose Market Share in Swedish Mortgages

(Bloomberg) -- Nordea Bank AB's Swedish mortgage loan book continued to shrink in November after the biggest Nordic lender saw the first decline in at least 15 years the previous month.

The mortgage book fell to 443.5 billion kronor ($54 billion) in November from 444.7 billion kronor in October, according to Statistics Sweden data published on Friday. The decline accelerated to more than 1.1 billion kronor in November from a net outflow of 989 million kronor in October.

Nordea is losing clients in the biggest Scandinavian economy just a few months after saying it plans to move its headquarters to Helsinki from Stockholm for regulatory reasons. It follows earlier indications Nordea was suffering defections in Sweden, with online mortgage brokers reporting they'd been contacted by angry customers eager to switch banks, and rivals such as SBAB saying they're grabbing market share.

The market overall is still growing, with Swedish mortgage lending up 0.6 percent in the month and 7.1 percent from a year earlier. Nordea's overall market share fell to 14.3 percent from 14.4 percent in October. It was 15.0 percent in January. 

Following the publication of the October numbers in late November, Nordea said it had “chosen to be somewhat more cautious in the mortgage lending market during the year" and that it has “not actively tried to gain market share.”

Sweden's housing market is cooling after years of surging prices, raising concerns over a hard landing. Apartment prices in Stockholm slid a monthly 4.2 percent in November, the steepest decline since 2008.

--With assistance from Nick Rigillo

To contact the reporter on this story: Niklas Magnusson in Stockholm at nmagnusson1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jonas Bergman at jbergman@bloomberg.net, Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net.

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