Competition for Swedish mortgage customers continues to increase, driving down bank margins. Meanwhile, revelations about money laundering at Sweden's largest mortgage bank accelerated a fall in the bank's market shares, benefitting smaller banks which have avoided negative headlines that have affected larger peers.
"The ability for Länsförsäkringar Bank and SBAB to take market shares is obvious from the statistics", says Sean Cotten, lead analyst for financial institutions at NCR. "Our analysis also shows that nearly all smaller banks, including savings banks, have increased their market share."
Meanwhile, Swedish housing prices turned upwards during the first half of 2019, erasing previous losses and returning the market to year-on-year gains. Most of these gains occurred in the first quarter of the year and Nordic Credit Rating (NCR) projects slower growth in the second half.
Table 1 below shows residential mortgage lending market shares as of end June 2019. The remaining columns show each bank's share of the marginal growth in the Swedish mortgage market for the last twelve, six and three months, respectively.
As of June 2019 | Last 12 m | Last 6 m | Last 3 m | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Swedbank | 24.1 | 17.8 | 14.5 | 12.1 |
Handelsbanken | 22.5 | 16.9 | 16.3 | 16.1 |
SEB | 13.8 | 9.1 | 13.6 | 15.8 |
Nordea | 13.5 | 7.8 | 12.2 | 13.8 |
SBAB | 8.4 | 12.9 | 8.3 | 12.7 |
Länsförsäkringar Bank | 6.9 | 13.8 | 15.1 | 14.7 |
Danske Bank | 3.8 | 6.5 | 4.3 | 1.3 |
Skandiabanken | 1.9 | 5.2 | 7.4 | 5.7 |
Sparbanken Skåne | 1.2 | 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.0 |
Sparbanken Nord | 0.3 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.6 |
Sparbanken Sjuhärad | 0.2 | 1.0 | 0.7 | 0.4 |
Sparbanken Rekarne | 0.2 | 0.5 | 0.3 | 0.4 |
Landshypotek Bank | 0.1 | 1.5 | 1.3 | 0.9 |
Nordnet Bank | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.1 | -0.1 |
Varbergs Sparbank | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.2 |
Westra Wermland Sparbank | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
Other banks | 2.7 | 2.4 | 1.6 | 2.1 |
You can download the full research report on https://nordiccreditrating.com/ratings-research/research.
If you have any questions, please contact:
Sean Cotten, Lead analyst, +46 735 60 03 37, sean.cotten@nordiccreditrating.com
Geir Kristiansen, Analyst, +47 90 78 45 93, geir.kristiansen@nordiccreditrating.com