It’s been a relatively bad year for Nordea, the Nordic financial services group with a strong presence in Denmark.

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First it was outed in the Panama Papers as helping customers to establish tax havens, and then it was claimed it had hugely underestimated the amount of risk in its corporate lending.

And now it has displaced Danske Bank as the major bank with the most dissatisfied customers in Denmark.

Less relevant, more distant
The annual Voxmeter survey, which was based on 1,000 interviews about banking experiences, reveals that Danes feel Nordea’s services haven’t kept pace with modern living requirements and that the bank has become increasingly distant from its customers.

“It’s not just this year’s negative publicity about tax havens in Panama, although it won’t have helped matters,” Voxmeter chief executive Christian Stjer told finans.dk.

“Contact with the bank only seems to happen when it’s something negative. Furthermore, customers believe it’s become more expensive to bank there.”

Torben Laustsen, the director at Nordea responsible for private customers in Denmark, conceded to finans.dk that it had been a difficult period and that the bank “can and must do better”. IT challenges, he said, had also posed some problems.

It wasn’t long ago that things had been much rosier. According to the annual Banking 500 report by Brand Finance in February 2015, Nordea had the most valuable brand in Scandinavia.

Better for Danske Bank
Danske Bank, meanwhile, was pleased with a huge improvement, telling finans.dk that its “proactive” customer-first approach, originally implemented towards the end of 2013, was paying dividends.

Still, it was only second last, just behind Nykredit, while Arbejdernes Landsmark had the highest satisfaction rating.