The Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority slightly raised Aktia's capital requirement
Translation: Original published in Finnish on 11/26/2025 at 7:45 am EET.
The 0.25 percentage point increase in the additional capital requirement is small, and its impact on the bank's overall capital adequacy is minor. Therefore, the release does not affect our assessment of Aktia's dividend potential.
The discretionary additional capital requirement increases slightly
As part of its annual Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP), the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority has set a new discretionary additional capital requirement of 1.25% for Aktia. The previous corresponding requirement was 1.00%. The new requirement will enter into force on March 31, 2026. As this is a regular and routine process, a small change in the requirement is not surprising. Also, to our knowledge, the increase in the capital requirement is not due to concerns about a significant increase in Aktia's risk level, for example.
The impact on solvency remains minor
At least three-quarters of the new requirement must be Tier 1 capital, of which at least three-quarters must be Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1). This means that the increase in the total requirement will be reflected in the CET1 capital requirement by less than 0.2 percentage points. Thus, the change does not have a material impact on Aktia's solvency.
Aktia's minimum CET1 capital requirement is currently 8.6%. Aktia's own target is to keep the CET1 ratio 2-4 percentage points above the regulatory requirement. Management has also commented that, under normal circumstances, solvency should be close to the upper end of the target range. At the end of Q3, the buffer was 4.4%, so the bank does not need to strengthen its balance sheet. This, in turn, means that the dividend distribution must be more generous than the company's dividend target (~60% of the profit for the financial year) so that the solvency does not significantly exceed Aktia's solvency target. Our own forecast expects an average dividend payout ratio of approximately 80% in the coming years.
