The Supervisory Board of OP Financial Group's central cooperative has made a decision in principle whereby Helsinki OP Bank Plc will be converted from a limited liability company to a cooperative bank during 2016. The new OP will serve over one million customers in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area - a fifth of all Finns.
- Our new decision will enable customer ownership of OP Financial Group on a nationwide basis. This is an important and highly principled approach. During the last 20 years, not all our customers across Finland have had equal opportunities to contribute to the bank's decisions and operations at local level. The Helsinki Metropolitan Area has not had this opportunity. Now we want to end this inequality among the Group's customers, says Reijo Karhinen, OP's President, Group Executive Chairman.
Deeper customer involvement in our transformation process
Customers, who can enjoy financial benefits through their customer relationship, also play a vital role in OP's transformation. Customers of the new OP Helsinki will have the opportunity to be involved in the development of OP operations through the bank's representative assembly and board of directors. In addition, OP Helsinki will also create a specific customer forum which enables a more powerful voice of customer-owners in the development of services. The existing Helsinki OP Bank bonus customers will be invited to become the new bank's customer-owners through a capitalisation issue.
- With the new OP owned by its customers, we want to bring something new and different in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, states Karhinen.
Along the new bank, OP Helsinki, OP Financial Group's retail banking based on customer ownership will make a comeback to the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. Before the Finnish banking crisis of the 1990s, Group member cooperative banks, such as Suur-Helsingin Osuuspankki, operated in the area. At the time when efforts were made to survive the crisis, OP Financial Group and the banking sector as a whole saw partial restructuring. At that time, cooperative banks in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area were merged with the then OKO retail banking operations to become Oko Bank plc which later on became Helsinki OP Bank Plc.
Shared management - uniform financial services offering
When OP Financial Group announced a tender offer for Pohjola shares in February 2014, it also announced a plan that Pohjola Bank plc and Helsinki OP Bank Plc would merge.
- We decided, however, to abandon the plan as we found a solution according to which we can offer ownership of the retail bank to our customers. But we will adhere to our decision that our businesses in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area will operate under the shared management. From the customer's perspective, we aim to provide a uniform OP financial services offering encompassing all banking, non-life insurance and wealth management products and services, explains Karhinen.
Furthermore, Pohjola Bank plc will be renamed OP Corporate Bank.
OP Helsinki as subsidiary will be part of OP Financial Group central cooperative consolidated according to plan. Since the central cooperative will continue to play a major role in capitalising the new bank, the bank's bylaws are meant to be formulated in such a way that OP Financial Group has a controlling interest of 2/3 in the bank.
The planned changes required regulatory approval from the relevant authorities.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT
Reijo Karhinen, President, Group Executive Chairman
Carina Geber-Teir, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications
Callback requests to OP Communications, tel. +358 (0)50 523 9904
OP Financial Group is Finland's leading financial services group providing a unique range of banking, wealth management and insurance services. OP's mission is to promote the sustainable prosperity, security and wellbeing of its customer-owners, customers and operating regions. Its objective is to offer the best and most versatile package of loyal customer benefits on the market. OP Financial Group consists of about 180 member cooperative banks, its central cooperative OP Cooperative, and the latter's subsidiaries and affiliates. The Group has a staff of 12,000 and 4.3 million customers.
www.op.fi