Nordic Market Overview, H1 2024

Stockholm 2024-04-03

A lot of changes – we love it!

Market overview:

We at Helix Ice continue to share our knowledge regarding the latest trends and business information for the Nordic NPL market.

Who is buying in the Nordics and when is it the best time to sell NPL portfolios? That’s the two most frequent asked questions right now and I have had several calls and meetings the last months with sellers that needs to sell but really can’t find a perfect match out there. And now we are talking about established sellers in both Bank & Finance and Telecom. We also notice that old portfolios are coming back out again to the market to test if the appetite for that portfolio have changed since last time. Last month we attended NPL Europe 2024 in London, yet another great event arranged by SmithNovak, and as always it gave us a lot of market insight and a chance to connect with new potential co-investors but also to meet up and discuss different opportunities with colleagues in the business. At that event and in meetings after, we got confirmation on that a lot of deals are being withdrawn from the market because the sellers and buyers can find the perfect match. Approximately up to 70-80% of the deals have been withdrawn the last 12 months and with that it takes of course a much longer time to get a deal closed but also that we have bigger volumes to choose from with a buyer perspective.

At the same time the big shift continues in the Nordics with some debt collection companies leaving different markets and some buyers are stepping down and changing focus to be more of a servicing company than a buyer and vice versa. Axactor, Intrum and Lowell are all examples of that and we also now see more opportunities regarding M&A in the Nordic market. Within the next nine months we believe that we will see new ownerships and new collaborations within debt collection and debt purchase in the Nordics announced. Very interesting times right now in the Nordics with a lot of changes and we love to be around that type of environment!

New collaborations, securitization structures to finance bigger deals and a more open-minded view on new type of deal setups makes the Nordics to a very interesting region at the moment and we have continued to help our investors to invest in both Telecom and Bank & Finance portfolios the last 6 months, still with focus on the unsecured debts. First quarter of the year is always challenging when it comes to the collection rates in the Nordics but we are still in line on almost all NPL portfolios. This as we work closely with our different servicing partners and keep a focus on high activity rates to keep up the contact with the debtors to help them find the best possible way to get debt free.

Feel free to contact us for a dialogue regarding the NPL market in the Nordic region and to discuss different type of securitization solutions, market opportunities or different type of collaborations. And if you plan to visit the Nordics, lets meet up in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo or Helsinki to discuss your views on the latest trends in the NPL portfolio business. We at Helix Ice are always interested in sharing knowledge regarding the upcoming NPL transactions across the Nordics and talk about different type of solutions and how you can get best possible return of investment.