Nordea and IBM sign agreement on IT partnership

As part of the solution, Nordea and IBM are forming a single-purpose joint venture, which will employ about 900 employees from Nordea starting 1 November 2003. The part of Nordea IT production to which this agreement applies represents an annual cost base of EUR 330-340 million including investment related expenses of EUR 30 million during the fourth quarter 2003. When the transformation is completed the partnership will bring significant cost savings to Nordea. In terms of absolute costs there will be a slight decrease during the next three years despite important transformation investments and volume growth. The agreement moves Nordea from a fixed IT production cost structure to a model where Nordea pays only for use of the systems and technology provided via IBMs on-demand services. A number of technological platforms will be consolidated into one location, and networks and desktops will be standardised. IBM will deploy an environment that automates many tasks associated with key IT functions, such as resource provisioning, asset tracking, workflow scheduling, and real-time infrastructure monitoring. IBM and Nordea will jointly staff a Transformation and Innovation centre to help Nordea realise additional cost savings and performance improvements.