Engelsk

On 19 May 2022, Danmarks Nationalbank Governor Per Callesen gave a speech at the Local Banks' annual meeting on the housing market, inflation and capacity pressure. In addition, he touched on a number of current topics in the financial sector, including payments and cybersecurity. (The presentation is in Danish only).

In the first quarter of 2022, private Danish investors received record dividends of kr. 19 billion from investment funds. The large dividends are related to large price increases in the financial markets last year. Dividends are mainly paid in the first quarter and predominantly in February.

The report presents the conclusions of Danmarks Nationalbank’s oversight of the Danish payments infrastructure in 2021. The core payment and settlement systems and the key payment solutions extensively comply with international standards for safety and efficiency. Work is being done across the sector to strengthen cyber resilience. Changes in the risk outlook, including new derived risks, mean that this resilience must be continuously developed.

​In April 2022, the foreign-exchange reserve decreased by kr. 0.6 billion to kr. 535.1 billion.

Foreign investors received historically large dividend payments in March of kr. 31 billion from Danish listed companies. In March alone, dividend payments were on a par with the total annual dividends in previous years. Dividend payments are made mainly in March, but dividends are also paid out in other months. Since 2015, dividend payments to foreign investors in other months have been kr. 10-17 billion.

At the end of March, the market value of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage bonds was kr. 134 billion lower than the nominal value. This means that borrowers with fixed-rate mortgages may potentially cut the outstanding debt by kr. 134 billion or 11 percent when refinancing their mortgage.

Before the pandemic, wage and price inflation remained low in Denmark and other advanced economies, despite falling unemployment rates. We attribute the subdued inflation to low competition among firms to hire employed workers. This same force may continue to constrain inflation once the current rise in energy and commodity prices has been passed through to consumer prices.

Despite the fact that Denmark was partly locked down in January 2022, the card turnover in the 1st quarter of 2022 reached kr. 176.4 billion. This is a new record compared to the corresponding quarter in previous years. The card turnover in the 1st quarter of 2022 was 10.8 per cent higher than the previous record in the 1st quarter of 2019, which was not affected by corona restrictions.