WORLD-CLASS SERVICE

» The whole SEB team will, step by step, continue to deliver on our vision. «

The year 2016 marked the start of a new business plan focused on growth and transformation.

Looking back at my tenure as the chief executive of this fantastic bank, I must say it has been an era of so many different – and all of them exceptional – economic phases. The first years were characterised by abundant liquidity, rapid credit growth and distorted risk-return rewards. By now we all know how it ended. The deep global financial crisis with the acute phase following the crash of Lehman Brothers in 2008, had immense effects not only for the financial system, but also for the real economy. Still today, real global growth is not firing on all cylinders, despite years of unconventional monetary policy with massive quantitative easing programmes and even negative interest rates.

In SEB, we have always been guided by two principles: maintaining resilience and flexibility, and staying close to our customers. Through a strong balance sheet and sufficient liquidity reserves, we can support our customers in good times and bad, while continuously developing services to make the customer experience even more convenient.

In the past year, the shifting market environment continued to impact customer behaviour. Customers’ demand for advisory and risk management services remained. As business sentiment grew more positive towards the end of the year, event-driven large corporate credit demand rose and SEB participated in a number of public equity listings in the Nordic region. However, the low interest rate environment pushed many financial institutions to move further out on the risk curve and into less liquid investments. Both in Sweden and in the Baltic countries we supported domestically focused SMEs as they showed a growing willingness to invest.

The shifting demographic trends with increasingly ageing populations increase the needs for long-term savings. Customers appreciated our holistic savings offering, which now also includes traditional life insurance. SEB has taken an industryleading approach as both private individuals and institutional clients have higher demands for sustainability-focused investments.

The banking industry, just like all industries, has had to revisit business models following digitalisation and the rapidly changing customer behaviours. Thus, 2016 marked the beginning of a three-year business plan for SEB reflecting our belief that going forward customer orientation and digitalisation will increase in importance. We are changing our ways of working and have invested in and launched new customer interfaces in all segments, as well as a number of new services including remote advice.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all employees and customers for their commitment to and trust in SEB all through these years. It has been lots of hard work, but most of all it has been more than eleven years of passion for SEB. I know that the whole great SEB team will – step by step – continue to deliver on our vision of worldclass service.

Stockholm, February 2017

Annika Falkengren
President and Chief Executive Officer