Nordic Banks: Small beats in Q2 and a potential turning point for credit demand

Research evidence excerpt

Nordic Banks: Small beats in Q2 and a potential turning point for credit demand

Global Research

21 July 2026ab

Nordic Banks Equities

Europe Ex. UKSmall beats in Q2 and a potential turning point

for credit demand Banks

Johan Ekblom, CFA

Analyst

johan.ekblom@ubs.com

Nordic banks reported 4% better than expected pre-tax income in Q2 +44-20-7568 3580

The Nordic banks Q2 reporting season is over. Results came in slightly better than Joshua Humphreys

forecast on average with 4% better than expected underlying pre-tax profit. Net interest Associate Analyst

income was in-line with expectations (-0.5% vs. cons), but with potential near term joshua.humphreys@ubs.com

tailwinds as timing effects unwind (mainly Norway) and back end loaded credit growth +44-20-7567 0385

in Q2 provide support. On top this we continue to see some near term tailwinds from Franziska Fischer

higher interest rates. Comparing the results of the Nordic banks, we note the strongest Economist

clean pre-tax beats (vs. consensus) from SEB (+12%) and Danske (+4%), with all large franziska.fischer@ubs.com

cap Nordic banks in our coverage beating except for Handelsbanken (-4% miss). As +41-44-239 2054

NOBA and Jyske do not report until much later in the earnings season, this report only

looks at the large cap Nordic banks.

Strong fee income and slightly better costs (no clear AI benefits, yet)

Compared to expectations, we note that the Q2 beat was mainly driven by two factors:

(1) fees beat consensus expectations by +4% (+1% vs. UBSe), driven by strong equity

markets and increased levels of corporate activity (partially from the catch-up effect after

a weak end to Q1), and (2) costs that continue to show lower-than-forecast growth and

came in 1% better than forecast excluding Swed's 5% miss (due to treatment of