• New deals lift SEB Q2 profits above forecasts

Bloomberg said that increasing numbers of Swedes are turning to family and friends for help in buying a home, side stepping government efforts to cool soaring housing prices and growth in private debt.

“The big problem for policy makers is the high household indebtedness,” Bengt Hansson, an analyst at Sweden’s National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, told the news bureau. “It’s obvious by now that the loan-to-value cap hasn’t been sufficient to solve the debt problem and a stronger amortization culture is long overdue.”

Swedes who received non-bank assistance to fund mortgages rose to 52 percent in the period from 2012 to 2014, the highest level since at least the 1970s and up from 25 percent in the early 2000s, according to data last month from state-owned mortgage lender SBAB.

SEB and peers Nordea Bank AB, Svenska Handelsbanken AB and Swedbank AB are subjected to some of the world’s strictest capital rules. That has helped the lenders become the best capitalized major banks in Europe. SEB warned that those rules may hurt growth and banks’ ability to support the economic recovery in Sweden.

“We need to be profitable with a robust financial position so that we are not forced to pull back on lending in times of more subdued economic development,” SEB’s Chief Executive Officer Annika Falkengren said. “That would amplify cyclicality. Over the long term, the absence of a level playing field for the Swedish banking system in comparison to its European peers risks having a negative effect on real growth.”