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Case study – Swedbank
Investing in growth with language training EF has been working with Swedbank for over a decade to provide language training services to exactly suit their business needs. Swedbank’s need: Swedbank began as Sweden’s first savings bank in 1820, but now they are an international banking group spread out across various branches in Sweden and the Baltics. To facilitate international cooperation, the company made the decision in 2011 to conduct their Credit Committee meetings in English. This created an immediate need for language training, as many of Swedbank’s employees did not have an adequate English proficiency to attend such meetings. EF’s solution: By combining online courses, immersion courses abroad and in-company training, EF was able to provide a solution to suit all of Swedbank’s requirements. After the decision was made to conduct the Credit Committee meetings in English, EF worked with Swedbank to create a series of Banking and Financespecific private lessons that focused on the exact vocabulary that employees needed for their presentations. EF is now training around 150
students using this content in tailored private courses. The results: The Banking and Finance-specific private lessons have been hugely popular with Swedbank employees, who were initially apprehensive about giving their presentations in English. In fact, before the introduction of the training, the switch to English for the Credit Committee meetings was the most hotly-debated topic on Swedbank’s intranet forums. Indeed, there was some initial resistance among employees to studying English at all. However, after training began with EF, employees were much more enthusiastic and did not need to be encouraged to study. Many students have even progressed faster than expected, taking full advantage of EF’s Online School, virtual teacherled conversation classes and the 24 x 7 flexibility that it represents. Now they have every opportunity to feel prepared and confident to speak in front of an important group of individuals in English.
“It´s a great privilege to get banking and finance-specific private lessons. The EF program has contributed to great improvement in my profession and also in terms of personal development” Swedbank is a leading Nordic-Baltic banking group, with home markets in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The group is also present in other Nordic countries, the U.S., China, Russia and Ukraine. They provide full banking services for over 9.5 million private and 600,000 corporate customers.
Camilla Karlsson, Client Executive, Midcorp.