Is Nordea an expensive bank?

[dev]

Is Nordea an expensive bank for a private customer compared to Sampo or other banks in Finland? For example their credit card fees etc? I'm asking because I sent some money to a non-EU country using Sampo and Nordea. The sending fees was almost same, but the money they received (in local currency) was considerably low. The euro value did not drop against that currency. I'm wondering if anyone had such an experience?

[Upphew]

Is Nordea an expensive bank for a private customer compared to Sampo or other banks in Finland? For example their credit card fees etc? I'm asking because I sent some money to a non-EU country using Sampo and Nordea. The sending fees was almost same, but the money they received (in local currency) was around considerably less. The euro value did not drop against that currency. I'm wondering if anyone had such an experience?

I have never sent money outside EU, so no help on that front. CC fees... when the banc cards were discontinued Nordea offered me Visa (iirc) for funny price, considering that they offer Mastercard for free (the Stockmann one) that you can link to your account with no problems...

[Rip]

What is "considerably less" as a percentage?

[Upphew]

What is "considerably less" as a percentage?

No percentage payments, just flat fees at Nordea's end: http://www.nordea.fi/Personal+customers ... 12722.html

[Rip]

No percentage payments, just flat fees at Nordea's end: http://www.nordea.fi/Personal+customers ... 12722.html

That was for 'dev' who said the money received was considerably less, even if the fess were supposed to be about the same. I still think it could be just difference in currency exchange rates on different times. That as side, Nordea or any other bank won't use the same rate for both "buying" and "selling" of foreign currency, so there is effectively percentage fee too, but I doubt that is on average must different from the one in Sampo Pankki.

Back to dev: I don't think they are noticeably different from most other banks. S-Pankki is cheap, but you can't get loan to buy a house from them. If you have loan from Nordea, then probably everything else you need is free.

.

[Kutittaa]

Speaking completely on opinion it took me about a month to choose between Osuuspankki, Nordea or Sampo Pankki. I was going to go for Nordea just because they have service in Finnish, Swedish or English. Whereas the other 2 banks only really have service in Finnish or Swedish. After looking at fees (now I have no idea what you consider 'expensive' or what fees you are talking about). Regardless, I couldn't find much of a difference in fees to Osuuspankki and after looking at all three I came to the decision that all 3 of them were pretty similar, except that Nordea and Osuuspankki are bigger banks than Sampo Pankki.

Nordea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordea
Osuuspankki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OP-Pohjola_Group
Sampo Pankki: http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampo_Pankki

Last one is in Finnish only.

I did a 3 year commerce course but that mainly covered law. I couldn't really honestly see much of a difference between the 3 major banks.
According to this: http://www.expat-finland.com/finance/banking.html

It states that those 3 banks hold about 80% of the customers in Finland.

Personally I don't like Osuuspankki much. Their customer service is pretty terrible, at least here in Oulu. The service in Nordea was really nice but I ended up going with Osuuspankki because my wife already had an account there and we needed to be able to transfer money back and forth quickly. Otherwise I would have gone with Nordea.

Regarding on what is 'expensive' or such I can't give much of a comment. For me the most important thing was transferring money quickly and also what banks were the most widely accepted online. Nordea and Osuuspankki seemed to be the most with Sampo Pankki a very close second.

I'm sure the other members here vary from the 3 banks and they'll be able to give you their opinions on those, plus they've had a lot longer to deal with their banks than I have.

[dev]

What is "considerably less" as a percentage?

Sent 500 eur both times + ~7eur fees. From Nordea they received about 35eur less.

I still think it could be just difference in currency exchange rates on different times.

As I mentioned in my first post, the exchange rate was same both times (checked on xe.com) and time interval was short. So i was guessing that may be when Nordea sent money to the local bank in other country, Nordea gave the bad exchange rates compared to Sampo.

[Rip]

Sent 500 eur both times + ~7eur fees. From Nordea they received about 35eur less.

Ok, that is a lot relatively speaking (somewhat exotic currency from Finnish perspective?).

My recollection of credit card exchange rates for USD and Japanese yen have been acceptable enough, and I would not still think they are expensive in general, but with that experience I too would try use Sampo Pankki for that particular transaction.

[dev]

Thanks Rip, Kutittaa, and Upphew for your replies.

[Kutittaa]

Sent 500 eur both times + ~7eur fees. From Nordea they received about 35eur less.

Ok, that is a lot relatively speaking (somewhat exotic currency from Finnish perspective?).

That is really nothing to what my bank charged me to move $3000 from Australia to Finland. The fee was $50 for an IMT (International money transfer) and then a maximum of 8.95% of the money sent. I lost about $300 or so. It is in no way 'convenient' to lose about 10% of the money you are sending.

[NeelaKobeyya]

I have noticed similar differences when I sent money to my home country. I think it might be because these banks belongs to different banking alliances.
I've noticed that when I sent money from the same bank (OP) to different banks there, one bank got ~20Euro less than the other.
It seems to that one bank payed some fee for an intermediate bank for the transaction and other one didn't.
If you are sending money regularly it's better to find the combination of banks which cost you the least amount.

[Rosamunda]

Sometimes the receiving bank also charges a fee and this is not indicated in Nordea's netbank when you confirm the transaction (assuming you did it on-line yourself which is the cheapest way of doing it). IIRC, there is some small print stating that the bank is unable to advise on any charges levied by the receiving or any intermediary banks. When you make the payment in Nordea's netbank you are given (ie you can see it on the screen) the net amount "sent". If you compare that to the net amount "received" at the destination, the difference would probably be due to charges beyond Nordea's control.

Did you send the money to the same destination (bank) both times?

[kjscot2]

Every time I've sent money to the US using Nordea netbank, the amount the other bank received was at an exchange rate $.10 lower than what the internet showed to be current exchange rates. Have never bothered to check against other options because it's so convenient to use the netbank.