Nordnet is waiting for the authorities’ lessons – “We have done additional action that this will not happen again”

Investment service company The investigation of the Nordnet security problem has shifted to the hands of the authorities.

On Tuesday, Nordnet closed its service for more than four hours on Tuesday, when it was revealed that some customers had ended up in the accounts of other clients.

The kind of consequences, fines or other penalties for Nordnet, may still have to wait for a long time, perhaps even several months.

Nordnet Finnish Country Manager Suvi Tuppurainen says that the company has conducted and submitted all the necessary reports last week to both the Financial Supervisors and the Data Protection Authorities in Sweden, a home country of the company.

The duration of the authority reports is not yet known, says Tuppurainen.

A possible penalty given by the Financial Supervisors may be a public warning at their most minor. The more serious the penalty is and the more severe penalty fee. At its peak, the penalty fee can be ten percent of turnover.

Sanctions are generally assessed based on the serious and extensive problem, whether it is negligence and how quickly the problem has been addressed.

The consequences of Nordnet can come also from data protection authorities. There may be a note or an order to change the policies. If necessary, authorities may prohibit the processing of personal data from the company.

At its harshest, a penalty fee may be up to four percent of net sales or up to EUR 20 million.

Main responsibility The Swedish Supervisory Authority has a Financial Specification with which the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority cooperates with the Swedish Supervisory Authority.

The data protection authorities of different countries are also working together.

Nordnet operates in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark.

Client According to Tuppurainen, the surveys have been completed. The company is aware of customers who ended up in the service when logging in to other clients.

The processing of any requests for compensation and requests for compensation is still ongoing.

“So far, we have not received any decision from the authorities,” says Tuppurainen.

There are about 1,500 customers who see other customers’ account information in different countries, of which about 500 were in Finland. These customers have been notified.

In total, Nordnet has two million customers, of which less than one third, 630,000 are in Finland.

“In caseswhere the customer had commissioned another customer’s portfolio, there are a total of three, ”says Tuppurainen.

Two of these were realized as stock sales, but the third was canceled.

One of the actual transactions was a small stock trade in the Swedish customer’s account and the other was a share trade of just over EUR 7,000 in the Finnish customer account. The shops were canceled afterwards and there was no financial damage to customers. Nobody’s account was also taken out of money.

“These shops were all inadvertently made and there is no reason to doubt fraudulent activities,” says Tuppurainen.

Although some of the customers threatened to transfer their shares and money from Nordnet, there is no customer loss in Tuppurainen in the figures. According to him, the number of new customers has also been at normal level.

How Let’s make sure that no similar problems will come again?

According to Tuppurainen, the IT software component that caused the problem was disabled as soon as the matter became clear during the service break.

“We have also done additional measures to prevent this from happening again,” says Tuppurainen.