Danske Bank is said to have been collecting outdated debt from Danish clients for years – E24

Internal documents Berlingske Tidende and Danish TV2 have had access to claim that Danske Bank has for several years demanded too much money from the bank’s most indebted clients.

In total, according to the bank, there are between 10,000 and 15,000 clients, but according to the documents, more than 100,000 clients will be investigated in the case.

The reason behind this must be errors in the bank’s customer data and IT systems.

TI’s mistakes have led Danske Bank to accept excessive amounts and claim items of debt to which the bank was no longer entitled. According to Danske Bank Deputy CEO Rob De Ridder and internal documents, most claims have been between NOK 1,000 and 2,000 too high for the clients involved.

Øystein Andre Schmidt, Danske Bank Norge press director, informs Dagens Næringsliv that only the bank’s Danish customers are affected.

It can cost up to 400 million

However, the documents show that there are examples of clients who have had up to 100,000 NOK more deducted from them, and in other cases the bank has tried to collect more than double the actual claim, according to the media.

The bank tells the Danish media that it has raised up to 50 million Danish crowns more. With clearing and cleaning, the bill can reach NOK 400 million, writes TV2

All the way back to 1979

Consulting firm Ernst & Young is said to have investigated the bank’s IT errors last year, after bank employees announced it.

According to the media, the consultancy’s review revealed that several of the errors date from 1979. Most of the errors date from 2004, when the bank introduced a new digital recovery system, writes TV2.

Another stain

The debt collection case is part of a series of scandals at the leading Danish bank in recent years.

Most recently, last summer, Denmark’s CEO Jesper Nielsen resigned after the bank charged excessive fees related to an investment product at the bank. According to the bank, 87,000 clients paid high fees.

The biggest scandal, however, was when it was revealed that Danske Bank had been involved in money laundering through the bank’s Estonian branch.

The money laundering scandal became known in March 2017, when Berlingske was able to reveal that very large amounts had passed through the bank’s Estonian branch without the bank following procedures to expose money laundering.

The branch may have been used to launder billions of crowns from Russia and Azerbaijan, among others, over a period of eight years. An internal investigation has analyzed transactions totaling 200,000 million euros, about 1,500,000 million Danish crowns, that have passed through the branch. According to Danske Bank, many of them were suspects.