In an unprecedented move, Casper von Koskull took his bank and relocated the headquarters to another country. Now, he has termed his staff a risk factor and expressed his admiration for Amazon. Could this be a recipe for Swiss banking?

Casper von Koskull is the man who took Nordea and moved it from Sweden to his native Finland, which unlike Sweden has adopted the euro. He wasn’t at all moved by the protests in Sweden (which after all had twice injected taxpayers money to support the bank). Von Koskull had made sure shareholders were mollified with the promise to save the company 1 billion euros by moving.

That was a classic case of ‘walk the talk’. The ex-Goldman Sachs executive is famous for straight-talking. In 2017, he had let it be known that Nordea would be fully digital by 2021, with the loss of 6,000 jobs out of 30,000 as a consequence. That was followed up soon enough and half of the jobs he judged surplus to requirements are gone.

«A Good Thing»

In an interview with «Bloomberg», von Koskull has gone one better. He said that in ten years time, only half of the people that work in banking today will be left. And that, he added, was a good thing.

Von Koskull emphasized in the interview that he wasn’t simply making predictions, but that he was firmly convinced that they would come true. His words are being heard in European banking, because von Koskull is implementing what others may only dare talk about in private. Hence, it makes sense to have a closer look:

1. Human Risk Factor

Cutting jobs didn’t earn him any friends. Actually, he comes across as slightly misanthropic: cutting jobs is making banks more robust and lowers the risks, he says. He believes that automation makes the industry more safe and efficient. He wants to have robots and artificial intelligence installed at the front desk and proclaims that human interaction is merely necessary in wealth management and for mortgage selling.

His only and last problem presumably is that clients are human. Nordea Chairman Björn Wahlroos, a compatriot of von Koskull, has been cited as saying that 80 percent of all people are idiots, at least what concerns money matters.

2. Digitization and Efficiency the Be-All and End-All

Digitization and efficiency are what von Koskull thinks are decisive for which banks will survive. Companies that haven’t signed up to the same strategy as Nordea will fall foul of the future, he believes. This is also how one could explain why he dared to move Nordea from Sweden to Finland – the Swedish government had planned to increase a specific tax that would have hurt the bank and country borders in any case have become obsolete in the digital age.

3. Consolidation in Banking Has Only Just Begun

Europe is overbanked, Nordea’s CEO believes and consolidation has barely begun in the core business with client assets. There are too many rivals and way too many banks, he says. And even Nordea itself isn’t fit enough to act as a consolidator, he admitted readily.

4. Amazon as the Toughest Competitor

U.S. tech giants have been designated rivals of banking for years. But it has been fairly quiet on that front recently and still, von Koskull sounds the alarm bell. Facebook and Google may not imminently be the biggest of threats, but Amazon by contrast is, he claimed in the interview. Amazon was closest to becoming a competitor of the non-banking industries.

Whether von Koskull is a clairvoyant or mere pessimist remains to be seen. His views may however become significant as source of input for the Swiss banking community as it enters a new phase of consolidation and digitization.

Sergio Ermotti's Words

Sergio Ermotti, the CEO of UBS, in 2017 said there was no guarantee the bank would stay in Switzerland forever. He mentioned Nordea’s move, which by then had been in planning. In the same year, Ermotti also said that every third job would be eliminated within ten years.

Sounds similar to what von Koskull has promised up North, but at least the third of jobs at risk as mentioned by Ermotti seems comparatively benign with the standards set by the – now – Finnish bank.