Nordea Bank : #NordeaSlush17 – Unleashing growth potential

Nordea is one of the main partners for Slush Helsinki, Europe´s leading startup and technology event. With just a little more than a month to go, we're ready to unleash the full potential of startups and scaleups and help shape the future of banking.

Slush began as a movement to build a global community of entrepreneurs, technologists and other advocates of change and has now grown into a world-famous event. Slush will bring together startups, scaleups, investors, executives and the media in Helsinki from 30 November to 1 December.

'Slush is one of the most important events in the global startup scene. This is the first time Nordea will be one of the main partners, allowing us to play an even more active role,' says Kia Lund, who is responsible for the Slush partnership at Nordea.

'As the banking industry goes through a digital and cultural transformation, Slush can bring us closer to the startup community by providing access to the ecosystem of players at the event in Helsinki,' she adds

'Growth companies and new startups need support from day one. Through close collaboration, we help these companies create important networking contacts with equity investors, business angels, accelerators and startup hubs around the world,' says Iiro Korander, Nordea's Head of Business Banking in Finland.

Startup & Growth Unit - #NordicGrowth

Last year we launched our new Startup & Growth Unit to be able to focus more on growth companies and their needs, especially when it comes to funding. The unit will be participating in this year's Slush event with representatives from all the Nordic countries. The aim is to fuel growth in Nordic startups and scaleups and help international investors find Nordic unicorns.

'Nordea´s Startup & Growth activities are ramping up in all the Nordic countries. Our startup deal flow will be extremely interesting for Nordic investors,' says Vesa Riihimäki, head of the Startup & Growth Unit in Finland.

'Our door-opening role to large Nordic investors will also be valuable for startups in all the four Nordic countries. We now even have one person concentrating full-time on matchmaking between investors and startups in Finland,' he adds.

Nordea is the largest bank in the Nordic region, and our four Nordic home markets - Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden - constitute the 10th largest economy in the world.

Becoming the ideal partner

'We are constantly exploring partnership opportunities with startups to find new innovative services for our customers,' says Arto Kulha from Nordea's Group Digital unit.

One example is Feelingstream, which has helped us improve our customer service with such good results that we have now formed a commercial partnership with them, he explains. We are also partnering with Spiff to develop a social savings app, and last summer we ran a pilot with Smartcalling to see how their solution could increase response rates on outbound calls.

Slush will also help spread knowledge about Nordea's collaboration with third parties through our Open Banking portal. More than 800 have signed up to the developer portal.

'We want to show people that Nordea is more than a traditional banking partner, and that we are embracing the possibilities created by Open Banking. Our ambition is sky-high and Slush is a natural place for us to engage with the startup ecosystem. We want to learn how to be the ideal partner,' says Harry Brück from Nordea's Open Banking Initiative.

Follow us on social media: #NordeaSlush17