Nordic banking group Nordea announced earlier this week it has partnered with the European Investment Fund (EIF) to guarantee lending solutions to small businesses. Nordea reported that the European Fund will provide it with €700 million in guarantee capacity for 2021. The guarantee program also enables the banking group to off €1 billion of new financing to its customers on more “favorable” terms.
While sharing more details about the collaboration, Nina Arkilahti, Head of Business Banking at Nordea, stated:
“At Nordea Business Banking, we want to contribute actively to initiatives supporting SMEs that are driving economic recovery and fuelling growth. This is yet another tool for us to support our customers. We are proud to have been approved by the European Investment Fund to take part in the implementation of this European initiative and generate further financial support to relevant SMEs in Finland, Denmark, and Sweden.”
Nordea further revealed that The European Guarantee Fund (EGF) was recently founded by the European Investment Bank Group (comprising the EIB and the EIF) to ensure that SMEs in EU member states will have sustainable business plans are provided with liquidity to overcome COVID-19 pandemic-related adversities and that healthy businesses are supported to grow. EIF CEO, Alain Godard, further commented:
“The EGF is a pan-European tool, part of the EU’s recovery package, that will allow us to heavily increase our support for small businesses, in the Nordics and other EU member states. Businesses have suffered massively over the last year and we’re thankful that we can build on our partnership with Nordea to channel much-needed financing to them.”
The lending solutions come just a little over a month after Nordea announced it has updated its plan to fully integrate sustainability into its business strategy with a long-term objective to become a net-zero emissions bank by 2050 at the latest.
