Baltic Banking strategy

We want to be a clear leader in each Baltic market
– Biggest growth in volumes (in absolute terms)
– Highest profit (in absolute terms)
– Highest customer satisfaction

We operate in the Baltic countries. As a universal bank our business model is based on a large customer base. New customer acquisition and retention is a key for us. In customer relations, we value long-term partnerships. We offer professional service, convenient access and all that for a competitive price.

We want to be the clear leaders in our home markets. We set ourselves stretched targets and follow through with dedicated execution. We assess regularly our performance and communicate evaluation results clearly. We use performance-based compensation throughout the organisation.

We want to be considered as the best service company in all three countries. We offer high-quality products with accessible, proactive and uncomplicated service. We want our customers to perceive us as professional, but also being easy to do business with.

We want to excel in our capabilities to analyse and model customer data. As the largest universal bank, we have extensive information about our customer base as well as market trends. By building capabilities to work with this information we are able to enhance our offers to the customers as well as run our business more smartly.

We want to provide our customers with the widest distribution network regardless of their preferred channel. For everyday banking, we offer our customers a selection of easy-to-use services via our wide and convenient self-service network. Branch network is used for advice and pro-active sales.

Lending is the largest part of our business. We want to be perceived as a credit specialist with strong expertise and wide client offering. We continuously develop our credit skills to achieve a better risk-return ratio than the market in general. To stand out in this area we:
• Invest in training;
• Use decision support tools for risk taking;
• Run effective decision making process with the right expertise;
• Continuously monitor our business on portfolio level.

In recruitment we want to be the first choice for talent. We look for people who fit with our value-set. For talents we offer the best development opportunities in each of our markets. For top positions we prefer to develop our leaders within our own group. We develop talent for the whole Swedbank Group.

We make decisions close to the customer - business responsibility is with the people servicing the customer. Strategic initiatives are managed across the group. By having a lean organisational structure we reduce complexity and provide clear responsibility and authority.

• Our focus must be on profitable growth. Our bank is having the culture of high performance and stretched goal setting.

• To be the dominant player measured by market share gives us the opportunity to utilize the economies of scale, optimize our funding cost and cross sell products to wide customer base. It is important to create value in every period and we are measuring the performance against the following financial targets:

–To increase the operating profit before taxes by 20%
–Return on equity at least 20%
–Cost-income ratio below 42%
–Net loan losses below 0.35%*

*Target changed to P&L based ratio (provisions+write-offs – recoveries).