Danske Bank’s efforts to remediate the legacy issues, in which errors in the past may have led to poor outcomes or losses for our customers and which are handled by our central remediation unit, continue to progress. Since our update in December, developments and progress in terms of the remediation of our identified legacy issues have been as follows:

Fees for business customers: Danske Bank has identified a new legacy issue that concerns approximately 2,300 business customers, which for a period of time may have paid a credit renewal fee, which we had no basis for charging. This was due to a system error in 2015, when we automated a fee system for business customers. We are currently identifying affected customers and began contacting them at the end of January. All affected customers will of course be compensated.

Flawed data in debt collection systems: We have now reviewed about 83,000 customers and out of these, 1,500 are confirmed for compensation. The customers we have compensated so far have on average been compensated DKK 1,100. Meanwhile, the number of potentially affected customers has increased from 106,000 to 108,000. The additional 2,000 customers had been excluded due to a manual error after having repaid their debt in full. Their case files have been retrieved and will be reviewed. Furthermore, we have appointed KPMG and Poul Schmith to carry out an impartial investigation into the measures taken and to be taken by Danske Bank to correct the errors in its debt collection process and into Danske Bank’s IT systems for debt collection as ordered by the Danish FSA and communicated in November.

Interest on dunning fees: During the analysis of the debt collection issue, we identified and communicated the potentially wrongful charging of interest on dunning fees following a legislative change in 2005. In Denmark, the issue potentially concerns about 400,000 customers. We currently expect the wrongfully charged interest to amount to less than DKK 50 for half the customers. We will inform potentially affected customers as quickly as possible. We have identified a similar issue in Norway, where we have also stopped charging this type of interest and are investigating the scope. The amounts are also expected to be small.

Discrepancy between investment profile and agreement: We began contacting the 600 customers in December, for whom manual errors had caused discrepancies between their investment profiles and investment agreements. Since then, we have booked meetings with more than 50%of these customers to align their investment profiles and investment agreements.

Delays in dividend tax repayments: We have informed the 2,200 customers affected by delays in paying dividend tax refunds on some US securities.

The remediation of all these issues is overseen by Danske Bank’s central remediation unit, which is tasked with ensuring the remediation of legacy issues in a timely, decisive and proactive manner.

“We continue to progress on the remediation of the various legacy issues we have identified, and we have also begun to investigate the case that potentially affects about 2,300 business customers. As with the other legacy issues identified, our priority is to get to the bottom of the issue and ensure that any customer, who has suffered a loss due to our mistakes, is compensated as quickly as possible,” says Peter Rostrup-Nielsen, who heads the unit.

Website with information about progress on each legacy issue
We are furthermore launching a new website, on which we will provide regular updates about our progress on the remediation of the legacy issues.

“The aim of the website is to make it easier for interested parties to stay updated on the remediation process in these old cases as our work progress. We will, of course, continue to communicate directly and as quickly as possible to our customers as well as all relevant authorities – the website will in no way replace this direct communication,” says Peter Rostrup-Nielsen.

The remediation unit’s website can be accessed on www.danskebank.com/remediationupdate, where it is also possible to sign up for regular updates.

Danske Bank