Sparebanken Sør

Related Party Transaction • Apr 7, 2025

Sparebanken Norge chooses Tietoevry Banking as long-term strategic partner

Sparebanken Norge chooses Tietoevry Banking as long-term strategic partner

Sparebanken Vest, which on 2 May 2025 will merge with Sparebanken Sør to form Sparebanken Norge, announces today that the bank has entered into a long-term and strategic partnership agreement with Tietoevry Banking, the leading provider of modern core banking systems and related services for banks in Norway. The agreement has a duration of five years from 1 January 2027, after which Sparebanken Norge has two sequential options to extend of two years each.

- Sparebanken Norge has a goal to consolidate its position as the most cost-effective bank in Norway. The agreement with Tietoevry Banking forms a solid foundation for succeeding in this goal and is also an important step in the bank's work to develop the best customer experiences for the bank's 743,000 customers, says incoming CEO of Sparebanken Norge, Jan Erik Kjerpeseth.

- Tietoevry Banking has won the agreement with Sparebanken Norge in competition with the Danish company SDC/Netcompany Banking Services. The agreement has been entered into on competitive terms. This ensures Sparebanken Norge access to a modern banking platform that, together with the bank's strong and customer-oriented development environment, will improve the customer experience and streamline the bank's operations, says Jon Erik Solheim, CIO at Sparebanken Vest.

- We believe that a strong and long-term partnership, together with a strong development environment in our own bank, is the path to low complexity, good digital customer experiences and high cost-efficiency. The potential for strengthened cooperation has been made clear through a professional and thorough negotiation process to reach this strategically important agreement, says Jan Veikko Granroth, Executive Vice President Business Development at Sparebanken Sør.

The negotiations over the past six months have been conducted jointly in Frendegruppen, based on a common business volume in the collaboration. In this process, Frendegruppen has succeeded in negotiating two very attractive offers from two forward-looking suppliers in accordance with an ambitious progress plan. Sparebanken Norge and Lokalbanksamarbeidet are independent contractual counterparts in the current offers. When it comes to the decision-making process itself, the banks have somewhat different timelines. Pending final board approval, Sparebanken Norge is informing about its decision now to ensure that the timeline for technical merger in 2026 is maintained. Lokalbanksamarbeidet and the 16 banks naturally have a somewhat more extensive decision-making process and will make their choice by the end of May 2025.

- We are very pleased to have Tietoevry Banking as a strategic partner for Sparebanken Norge. This agreement gives us the opportunity to strengthen our digital capacity and offer even better services to our customers. We look forward to a strengthened collaboration where both Sparebanken Norge and Tietoevry Banking can capitalize on their strengths and develop a strategic partnership where we together create value for our customers, society, employees and owners, says Jan Erik Kjerpeseth.

Tietoevry Banking shares Sparebanken Norge's vision of driving innovation and customer-oriented growth in the banking sector:

- We are proud to be chosen as a strategic partner by Sparebanken Norge and look forward to working closely with the bank to deliver solutions that meet the needs of the future, says Endre Rangnes, CEO of Tietoevry Banking.

For further information, please contact:

Geir Bergskaug, CEO, tel.: (+47) 901 27 206

Jan Veikko Granroth, EVP Business Development, tel.: (+47) 480 49 408

Jon Erik Solheim, CIO Sparebanken Vest, tel.: (+47) 934 67 568

Steinar Vigsnes, CFO, tel.: (+47) 906 13 135

This information is subject to a duty of disclosure pursuant to the Securities Trading Act Section 5-12.