Our history
For 200 years, DNB has been here to support people, through changes big and small.
Most people lived in tough conditions 200 years ago, and few people thought of saving money. Still, these were the people who laid the foundation for a banking system that turned DNB into what we are today.
Some highlights of our history
• 1822: Christiania Sparebank, the first bank in the DNB system, was established in 1822 so that workers could deposit their weekly wages before they were tempted to spend them.
• 20th century: 600 savings banks were established in Norway. Over the last 10 years, many of them have been merged into larger banks.
• 1990: Two of the country’s largest banks, Bergen Bank and Den norske Creditbank, merged and formed Den norske Bank (DnB).
• 1996: DnB purchased Vital, and in the same year, dnb.no was launched and voted the best website by Kapital.
• 1999: Postbanken became part of DnB.
• 2002: The DNB Savings Bank Foundation was founded after a desire to use parts of the bank's profits for public benefit purposes.
• 2003: DnB and Gjensidige NOR merged and formed DnB NOR. Earlier that year, DnB bought Nordlandsbanken.
• 2011: DnB NOR, Postbanken and Vital Forsikring changed their name to DNB.
• 2015: Vipps was launched by DNB as a digital payment service for smartphones between non-professionals.
• 2016: DNB signed up to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030.
• 2017: DNB entered into an alliance with 105 Norwegian savings banks and established Vipps as its own company, and the app Spare was launched.
• 2018: The Norwegian Competition Authority and the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway approved the merger between Vipps, BankID Norge and BankAxept.
• 2019: DNB had several major launches this year: a new, cloud-based mobile banking app, the accounting app DNB Regnskap and DNB’s property services (Eiendomstjenester) Samsolgt.
• 2020: As the first banks in the world, DNB and 14 other banks publish the carbon intensity of their shipping portfolios.
• 2021: Merger between DNB ASA and DNB Bank ASA. The Ministry of Finance approved DNB's acquisition of Sbanken, but the acquisition was stopped by the Norwegian Competition Authority.
• 2021: The Norwegian Competition Appeals Board gave DNB the green light to buy Sbanken.
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