Type Division Area served Norway Website www.postbanken.no Founded 1948 | Industry Banking Key people Jarle Mortensen (CEO) Headquarters Oslo, Norway Parent organization DNB ASA | |
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Reklame for postbanken
Postbanken (lit. The Post Bank) was a Norwegian bank that is part of the DnB NOR Group. The bank offered its services through the Norwegian post office.
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History
Postbanken was founded in 1948 after major political battle as Norges Postsparebank with the goal to incurate to savings, though the maximum amount allowed to be saved per person was set to NOK 10,000. In 1948 the bank had services provided at 3,600 post offices and post outlets. The first loans were often large and given to investments in rural areas. Up until 1999 the bank was owned by the Government of Norway, but then it was merged with Den norske Bank, now DnB NOR. In 2001 the Postal Giro System was bought by Bankenes Betalingssentral and the year after the two giro systems merged, making the 60-year-old postgiro system history.
Criticism
There has been raised criticism to the fact that though the bank no longer is state owned, it receives subsidies from the state owned Postal Service since they have greater costs running the bank service than they get from DnB NOR. The Postal Service has announced that it does not wish to renew the agreement with DnB NOR and stop offering banking services.