News from Sweden 🇸🇪 Biggest banks raised mortgage rates and are not cutting them

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]news from Sweden. Sweden's biggest banks raised mortgage rates earlier this year, and now that market rates have dropped, they're not in a hurry to pass the savings on. But first, follow like Sweden for more things Swedish. In March and April, Sweden's major banks, Handelsbanken, Swedbank, Nordea, and SBAB, all raised their variable mortgage rates by 0.15 percentage points. The reason were raising market rates and increased financing costs linked to global uncertainty, including the war in the Middle East. But here's the thing.

[00:00:29]Riksbank, Sweden's central bank, never raised its policy rate. It's been sitting at 1.75% since September 2025. The banks acted on their own. Now, market rates came back down, and out of all the major banks, only SEB made the move, a cut of just 0.05 percentage points. That's a third of what they raised. Economist Claes Hembery didn't hold back. When rates go up, they're quick to raise. When they come down, not so much. That's pure greed, he said. Here's advice to Swedish homeowners, do the math, and if you can save money by switching banks, do it.