Danish owner says he has full confidence in Sampo Bank

Sampo lost 30,000 customers in April-June

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Problems affecting the data systems of Sampo Bank this year have not shaken the position of the bank’s management.
      Peter Staarup, CEO of Sampo Bank’s owner, the Danish Danske Bank, sees no reason to blame Sampo’s managers.
     
“The management of Sampo Bank has my full support. We have many good managers in Finland”, Staarup said in his office in the centre of Copenhagen.
      Persistent glitches in Sampo Bank’s computer systems, which arose when the systems were integrated with those of Danske Bank earlier this year, have not gone away.
      Staarup denies that Danske Bank would have ignored warnings from Finland on the weaknesses of the new system.
      “The number of users of the online bank was three times higher than the estimate that we got from Finland. People were curious and came to test the new bank. On the first day the number of people logging on to the online bank was at a completely different level than it ever was while when the old system was in use.”
      In March, after Easter, Sampo Bank switched over to the data system and online banking service of its new owner Danske Bank.
      Ever since that happened, there have been numerous glitches in the online banking service. In addition, debit cards issued by Sampo stopped working on many occasions.
      “It is clear that we have not done our jobs as well as we should have. We apologise to our Finnish customers from the bottom of our hearts”, Staarup says.
     
Sampo Bank lost 30,000 customers in the early part of the year. Of that number, 28,000 were private individuals who had grown tired of the disturbances in online banking, and the failure of debit cards to work properly.
      Before the mass exodus, the bank had just under 1.2 million customers.
      “A reduction of two per cent in our clientele does not have much of an effect on the result. I am nevertheless very sorry about the lost customers.”
      Sampo Bank’s pretax profit collapsed during the first six months of the year to one tenth of the level of early 2007. The result was EUR 6 million. The bank carries the burden of EUR 40 million spent on the development of its IT system.
      Danske Bank’s press release on its result indicates that Sampo Bank waived service fees to the tune of EUR 6 million in a move aimed at compensating customers for problems that they experienced.
      The company paid more than half a million euros in compensation - most of the money went to corporate clients.
     
Many Sampo Bank customers have asked why the bank’s management has stayed hidden after the problems emerged.
      Staarup feels that the Finnish managers have brought themselves forward sufficiently. “ Ilkka Hallavo and Maarit Näkyvä have been on television many times to explain the situation.”
      He also finds no great reason to criticise how customers were kept informed on the problems.
      “It is very difficult to inform customers in advance of completely unexpected events. If the system crashes, it is difficult to ascertain who has been affected. I am not asking for praise for the way we gave out information, but we have done our best and spoken openly about the diificulties”, Staarup says.
     
Peter Staarup believes that the worst problems have been cleared up. In his view, the online bank has remained stable in the past weeks. During the summer holiday period, the bank is likely to have fewer users than it will when people return from their vacations.
      “I cannot guarantee that we will not have problems in the future. All of our Finnish competitors also have glitches occasionally. We believe strongly that during the present quarter the online bank will be operating quite normally.”

More on this subject:
 Danske has no regrets about buying Sampo Bank

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Continuing problems at Sampo Bank leaving personnel exhausted (6.8.2008)
  Sampo Bank promises to compensate only direct costs of technical problems (11.4.2008)
  Finnish Sampo Bank Group to be sold to Danish Danske Bank for EUR 4.05 billion (9.11.2006)
  Hundreds of Sampo Bank clients considering changing banks (3.4.2008)
  Sampo Bank online problems continue (27.3.2008)
  Serious problems with launch of new online service of Sampo Bank (26.3.2008)

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