STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Jan. 28, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Nordea, a leading innovator in Electronic Banking, has passed a milestone of 2,000 corporate e-business customers.
Nordea's pan-Nordic operations serving almost 11 million customers, the widespread use of banking services over the Internet, and a steadily expanding customer base, have created opportunities for the Group to complement its already versatile range of e-services with e-business services. This means new opportunities and added value for both personal and corporate customers.
E-business services are a new dimension in electronic banking. Apart from the familiar elements of regular e-banking, they have the potential to extend even further the e-practices of our existing 2.8 million e-banking customers. Every transaction saves money for corporate customers whose customers also benefit from better convenience and cost savings. These services are set to gain broad acceptance by Nordea's nearly one million corporate customers, says Bo Harald, head of Nordea's Electronic Banking.
The familiar and secure service environment of everyday banking enables Nordea's personal customers to be reliably identified; they can shop in the largest Nordic market place, sign agreements with different companies, give information to the authorities and receive e-invoices and pay them with one click.
Achieving critical mass is vital for Electronic Banking, and this requires developing services that are in broad demand. Nordea's most popular e-business service is the e-payment, which serves the customers of 1,814 Nordic companies. Nordea's e-invoice is used by 143 companies, e-identification and e-signature by 17 companies and e-salary by 33 companies. Globally, Nordea is the leading provider of such services.
A networked world entails entirely new ways for banks to generate customer value. Indisputably, the greatest new benefit that we in Nordea can offer customers in the corporate and public sectors is that we already have such a large and varied stock of personal customers and entrepreneurs using our online bank, says Bo Harald.
Nordea offers the world's widest range of electronic financial services to over 2.8 million Internet customers and is a global leader in terms of actual usage. Last year Nordea's customers logged on to Internet services 76 million times and made over 88 million payments.
Fact Sheet
Key words in E-business
E-business is a wider concept than e-commerce (electronic commerce). E-business includes all the areas of the operation of a company (core business and supporting functions, eg finance area and personnel management) that can also be transferred to the net.
E-payment and Solo Market
Net customers can make secure online purchases using e-payment. At present Nordea has over 1,800 e-payment agreements with vendors who accept e-payment and over 600 of them are represented at the electronic marketplace Solo Market, accessible from Nordea's local web site in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Online buyers thus have convenient access to a wide range of goods and services - and also directly using WAP and GPRS phones.
For companies engaged in electronic commerce, net customers are an ideal target group, sufficiently large in number, with modern attitudes and purchasing power, familiar with online operations. By accepting e-payments, a company can eliminate invoicing and credit risks and thus achieve significant savings. This is particularly important with a large number of small transactions.
Vendors accepting the e-payment can achieve valuable visibility at the Solo Market, and a possibility of linking market places in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden - buyers and vendors from four countries. Nordea's local home pages (nordea.dk, nordea.fi, nordea.no and nordea.se) have become important portals, as an active online customer visits the e-banking services on average 4 to 5 times a month, and mostly via those portals.
E-invoice
E-invoice is a kind of semi-direct debit - an invoice sent to the customer's or buyer's computer rather than printed on paper. A company that uses online invoicing saves on postage costs and can provide better service in an interactive online customer relationship. A customer using e-invoice can receive an invoice directly to his computer, and approve payment without having to retype the details. Via this online invoice, the customer can also link to the invoicer's online service to obtain more information. The main emphasis has been put on consumer invoicing. B-2-B invoicing is going to be the next step.
E-identification and E-signature
Many enterprises and also the public sector need to be able to identify their online customers. As early as 1992 the insurance companies in Finland began to use e-identification. In dealing with authorities, this service can be used for example to send information to the corporate register maintained by the National Board of Patents and Registration of Trademarks.
Net customers can also sign agreements with third parties using their electronic IDs as a signature. There is also significant potential for an electronic signature of contracts.
E-salary
The latest e-service is e-salary, a service designed to enable employees to browse through their monthly salary data electronically via e-Banking services. Thus, the sending of a pay slip in a paper form will no longer be necessary. A substantial benefit is also that the pay slip details are saved in files thereby enabling the user backtrack to earlier salary data.
Nordea is the leading financial services group in the Nordic and Baltic Sea region and operates through four business areas: Retail Banking, Asset Management & Life, Corporate and Institutional Banking and General Insurance. The Nordea Group has nearly 11 million customers, 1,260 bank branches and 125 insurance service centres in 21 countries. The Nordea Group is a world leader in Internet banking, with more than 2.8 million e-customers. The Nordea share is listed in Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen.
Enclosed e-fact sheet www.nordea.com