ECB sanctions Nordea subsidiary for breaching limit on large exposures

10 March 2026

• Nordea Finance Finland Ltd breached reporting requirements and limit on large exposures
• ECB imposes penalty of €2.26 million

The European Central Bank (ECB) has imposed an administrative penalty of €2.26 million (€2,260,000) on Nordea Finance Finland Ltd (Nordea Rahoitus Suomi Oy) after the bank wrongly reported its largest exposures and breached the large exposures limit.

EU banking rules define large exposures as exposures to a counterpart or group of connected counterparts that exceed 10% of a bank’s capital. Banks are prohibited from allowing any single large exposure to exceed 25% of their capital.

For 13 consecutive quarters between 2021 and 2024, the bank incorrectly assigned guaranteed receivables to the debtors instead of the guarantors when calculating large exposures. This was prohibited by a regulatory change introduced in 2021. As a consequence, the bank exceeded the large exposures limit of 25% set out in EU law.

The bank committed the breaches with serious negligence. Deficiencies in its internal controls also contributed to the occurrence and duration of the breach.

When deciding on the amount of a penalty to sanction a bank, the ECB applies its Guide to the method of setting administrative pecuniary penalties. The ECB classified these two breaches as “severe”. The range of severity categories comprises “minor”, “moderately severe”, “severe”, “very severe” and “extremely severe”.

More details on sanctions imposed by the ECB are available on our supervisory sanctions web page.

The bank has the right to challenge the ECB’s decision before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

For media queries, please contact Lina Bennar, tel.: +49 152 06556600.