Nordic Market Overview, Summer 2022

Market overview:

Usually we send out our Nordic Market Overview twice a year. But with the rapid movement in our business right now and the different effects on the macro economics in the Nordics we decided that 6 months was too long time to wait for next Overview.

First of all, we have noticed a huge interest from global and regional investors to take a bigger step in to the Nordic NPL-market. We also see that a lot of established debt collection companies and NPL buyers are strengthen their organizations and financial muscles to be ready for all the opportunities that right now are available in the Nordics and for the ones coming out soon on the market. It’s in times like these that really big opportunities pop up. At the same time we notice that some of the sellers, especially within unsecured loans, struggle to find a buyer that is ready to pay the price that the sellers are looking for. Most likely we will see some creditors leaving the market as the unsecured loans in +300 TSEK segment have dropped quite dramatically in price levels due to the fact that to many creditors have been to soft in their credit controls when giving out new loans.

In Sweden we see that the economic margins for consumers are now on much lower levels than earlier which also effects the possibility to collect on NPL portfolios at the moment, much more activity per case is needed to get debtors to pay or at least keeping up the contact with the debtor until they have the ability to start their journey to get debt free. In Finland, we see that the tax return month in August are showing some positive signs and we also noticed that some interesting deals could be closed here before the end of the year. Norway and Denmark have also been affected of the high prices but so far, we don’t really see or hear so much from different sources that the collection rates have been affected. Could be something to watch out for in the coming months but still these two markets are super interesting we would say for new investors to step into. Really tough competition among buyers of NPL portfolios in Norway but still a good chance to make some great deals.

Last Nordic Market Overviews published we highlighted the fact that consolidation in the Nordic market were around the corner and that also was confirmed by the new Kredinor being established during the spring in 2022. As mentioned in the beginning of this Overview we see that the debt collection and NPL business are taking new steps and are getting ready for the future. For example, it will be very interesting to see what Hoist – Ropo Capital and Collector are planning to do soon? It’s a small world and our type of business is even smaller and when you have ownership and management crossing over between companies more and more that usually means something interesting is cooking. We are looking forward to a really exciting end of 2022 and start of 2023, we hope you are too!
Please feel free to contact us for more dialogues and opportunities around the Nordic NPL market.

/COO, Johan Gustafsson