The report presents the conclusions of Danmarks Nationalbank's oversight of the Danish payments infrastructure in 2020. The core payment and settlement systems and most important payment solutions extensively comply with international safety and efficiency standards. Efforts are continuously made to enhance the cyber resilience of systems/solutions. Due to the evolving nature of the cyber threat landscape, there is room for improvement – despite ongoing progress.

Danmarks Nationalbank posted a profit of kr. 1,616 million in 2020 against a profit of kr. 6,096 million in 2019. Gold stock, equity exposure and bond holdings all contributed significantly to the profit for the year.

The government budget developed better than expected in 2020. The Danish central government debt amounted to kr. 536 billion, equal to 23 per cent of GDP at the end of 2020. The course of the covid-19 crisis has clearly highlighted the importance of the central government having access to a broad and diversified investor base through multiple financing channels. Despite periods with market turmoil, domestic government bonds were sold at record low yields. On average, nominal government bonds were sold at a yield to maturity of -0.33 per cent p.a. and an average maturity of 11.6 years. Interest costs on the central government debt totalled 0.7 per cent of GDP.