Sparebank

Sparebank is a Norwegian savings bank without external owners. The Norwegian sparebanks are a separate type of juridical entity that differ from commercial banks. There are a total of 123 savings banks in Norway.

History

The first savings bank was created in 1822, and in the following 75 years there were created savings banks in most municipalities of Norway. The banks had both a saving upbringing function for the commoners, so they didn't have to burden society if they got sick and old, and served an important part in local communities development, self-financing and deveopment.

Historically the savings banks concentrated on prive customers, combined with small industry and the primary sector. Loans were attempted financed through deposits. Today the difference between savings banks and commercial banks are smaller, partially because savings banks now can issue stock-like "grunnfondsbevis" where the owners are both given dividend and representation in the governing bodies of the banks. The savings banks can now also convert themselves to public limited companies, but so far only one bank, Gjensidige NOR, had done so. Part of this later merged to form DnB NOR while the rest of it returned to the savinga bank form, becoming Gjensidige.

Traditionally the savings banks have had a strong local foundation, and a goal for the municipalities were often to have their own savings bank. After World War II there were about 600 savings banks in Norway. Partially because of municipal mergers, but primarily because banking after a while demanded broader and deeper competence and because the savings banks need to be bigger to capture larger customers, there was from the 1960s and about 25 years onwards a number of mergers among savings banks. Today there are 123 savings banks, of which some are large, regional savings banks. Parallel there has been a cooperation in Information Technology and product development, and a lot of the savings banks have joined one of two alliances: Sparebank 1 and Terra-Gruppen. Since most of the small commercial banks have been merged or bought by the large Nordic finance groups (DnB NOR, Nordea, Danske Bank etc., the savings banks remain as the last bit of decentralised banking in Norway. All savings banks are organised in the Norwegian Savings Bank Association.