In August 2012, Håkan Nyberg was appointed CEO of Nordnet. He brought decades of experience to the role, particularly his keen customer focus and understanding of online finance. In terms of my educational background, I have a Masters in Science and Engineering with Applied Mathematics, which is not the norm. I think Im the only bank CEO, at least listed in Sweden, that has a Masters in engineering; all the other guys are Masters in economics. However, it has not been a disadvantage for me in my career; I think it has been a fantastic advantage for me, because Im good with numbers and I understand them.
Ive been in financial services for more than 25 years, even though I started out working in IBM as a sales representative, and after that I kind of slipped into financial services, and Ive remained with that up until now. I would say that Ive been privileged because Ive always had super fun jobs with a combination of P&L responsibility, leadership, and also business and product development. For instance, I worked for Swedbank in 1999 and I was responsible for their internet banking, taking that into the new millennium, and boosting it.
We did some fantastic stuff, taking on new customers, but also building new functionality. For instance, I led the bank joint project creating the authentication system that we call Bank ID here in Sweden. So a lot of P&L, leadership, but also a lot of product and business development. Before I got this job, I was CEO of another Nordic businessa credit card businessa joint venture between Swedbank and Barclays, called EnterCard. I started there in 2005 and built that almost from scratch.