Word: meritanordbanken
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From the outside, Meritanordbanken in Helsinki looks like a typical staid European bank. Merita's ornate headquarters hall, with its rose marble columns and gilded cornices, harks back to the 19th century, when the Czar of Russia still ruled Finland. But don't be fooled. Behind the historic decor, Merita has become one of the world's most advanced banks, using the Internet and mobile phones to conduct most of its business. Some 1.2 million of its customers use the Web to bank, a world record, while only 6% of the institution's transactions are processed through a traditional branch...
...this high-tech prowess is a matter of necessity. MeritaNordbanken controls about 40% of Finland's banking market, so a merger with another domestic bank to cut costs was out of the question on antitrust grounds. Merita therefore embarked on a two-pronged strategy: use mobile and Internet technology to cut overhead, and become Europe's most aggressive bank in expanding across borders. In April it completed a merger with Denmark's Unidanmark three years after Merita joined forces with Sweden's Nordbanken. The deals have made Merita the largest bank in Scandinavia. "We see ourselves as a pan-Nordic...
...more is on the way. One service already attracting a lot of attention is a pilot project between MeritaNordbanken, the Finnish cell-phone maker Nokia, and Visa International, the credit-card company. Nokia will soon have available in Finland cell phones that contain two chips, one for mobile-telephone service and one from Visa that adds a nifty credit-card function to the handset. The Visa chip will allow a customer to hold the phone near a cash register and push a button to pay a bill rather than having a clerk swipe a credit card. The digital mobile phone...
...services, which even some U.S. banks are giving away to encourage Web use. "The customer doesn't realize its value if you don't charge," says Harald. Maybe that's one reason banks as far away as Canada send over executives to observe how MeritaNordbanken is using technology...
...across borders for merger partners, the better to compete with America's megabanks. But a funny thing happened on the way to banking consolidation: nothing. Except for a few small deals, such as the 2000 takeovers of Bank Austria by Munich-based HVB, and Unidanmark by Swedish-Finnish lender MeritaNordbanken, banks have preferred to merge with homegrown rivals rather than competitors abroad. Until last week, that is, when the first big European cross-border deal was finally unveiled. Banco Santander Central Hispano, Spain's largest bank, agreed to buy British mortgage lender Abbey National for approximately €13.4 billion, creating...
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