The information on this page is general. Your company may have specific schemes that differ.

Share savings for employees

Information about buying, selling and owning shares in the company you work in.

Help with buying and selling shares in your own company
Full summary of what you own
Rules and taxes

You can order access a little further down this page.

Share savings programmes for company employees have existed in Norway since Freia launched their scheme in 1929. Today, almost 7 in 10 exchange-traded Norwegian companies have some form of share savings programs for their employees.

We in DNB Markets help many of the corporations in Norway that have share savings programs. We help employees with the practicalities of buying, selling and holding shares.

Your employer will always give you full details of your company’s offer and the terms and conditions that apply.

Are you an Equinor employee?

As an employee of Equinor, you must first provide proof of identity and establish a trading account (including VPS), before you can purchase shares through their share savings program.

Click the link below to access information specifically for Equinor employees.

For Equinor

You have received an offer to buy shares at work – what to do now?

Open a securities account and a trading account

Everyone who buys and owns shares must have either a regular share trading account or a share savings account (ASK). A securities account (VPS) will automatically be created with both types. When you become a customer, you will receive the accounts you need.
Read more and become a customer here
When you have a customer relationship with a brokerage company and have the accounts you need, you can purchase the employee shares you want.

Place your order before the deadline

To buy shares as part of the employee scheme, you need to buy within the ordering period your employer has specified.

In the offer from your employer, you will normally find a link to Euronext Securities Oslo (VPS).
Click on the link to place your order online before the deadline.
On Euronext Securities Oslo’s website, enter the account numbers from step one and provide the other details about yourself.
You also need to decide how many shares to buy.
NOTE! If your company opens it up, you can use your share savings account (ASK) for the purchase. If so, you must enter the share savings account number when making your purchase. A share savings account from DNB will always start with the digits 01260.

Check your holdings in our online equity trading service

The offer contains an ordering period in which to purchase. When the period ends, the orders will be executed, and your employee shares will appear in your securities account (VPS-account).
As a rule, you company will specify when you can expect to see the shares in your account.
You can monitor when the shares appear and what value they have using our online equity trading service.
Log in to the online bank with BankID, choose ‘Saving and investing’ in the menu, and then ‘Equity trading’.
On the equity trading page, you will always see a summary of your shareholdings.
This is where you need to go if you want to sell your shares later.
(You can log in at the top of this page)

Order equity trading here

How can you sell your employee shares?

If you are a DNB customer and have access to the VPS account you have used for savings in our online equity trading service, you can sell your shares in the normal way. Watch our demo videos (below) to see how to do this. If you have another VPS account that cannot be accessed through DNB, you must first transfer the shares to the VPS account that is shown on our equity trading service before you can sell them. We explain this in the video below.

When you buy or sell shares, a brokerage fee is charged. You will also find our price list below.

To trade shares online, you must be a permanent resident of Norway with a Norwegian national identity number or temporary social security number (D-number).

Watch the demo videos Our price lists

Important information about the lock-in period

Shares with a lock-in period are not blocked. You are responsible for checking how many shares can be transferred without losing your bonus or other benefits.

What if…

…you don’t have access to DNB’s online equity trading service?

…you get an error message when ordering the online equity trading service?

If you get an error when ordering a service, the statutory customer due diligence or proof of identity are probably not in place.

The simplest solution is to call our customer services centre on (+47) 915 04800 and ask them to carry out customer due diligence. After the customer due diligence is complete, go back to the order page and enter a new order. If you are still experiencing problems, you can call the customer set-up team in DNB Markets directly on (+47) 907 86 261. This department is available every weekday between 08:00–18:00.

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…you want help with selling your shares?

You can get help with selling your shares from an Execution Broker by using this form:

Sales Order for Execution (PDF, Norwegian)

Sales Order for Execution (PDF, English)

NB! NB! The brokerage fee is much higher when you trade manually than when you trade by yourself online. The price for manual trading is 0.5 per cent of the sales total with a minimum of NOK 500 in brokerage fees. After 2 trading days you will receive payment, minus the brokerage fee.

How can I check restricted holdings and how can I transfer shares between accounts? (In Norwegian, with English subtitles)

Julie Gusdal tells you how to do this, click by click. (English text can be selected)

VPS and Investor Services

Read more about the difference between a VPS account, a share savings account (ASK) and a trading account and what Investor Services can do for you.

Securities Services

Securities services help owners and issuers of securities. Their services make the administration of ownership easier.

Employee shares FAQs

Is there a lock-in period?

Many companies specify that the shares must be owned for a certain period before they can be sold. If it is specified that you must own the shares for one year, for example, you will not be able to move or sell the shares. Any breach of the lock-in period may have consequences for you, such as having to repay the discount you were given.

In some cases, the shares will be blocked from being transferred. Others have an optional lock-in period, and the shares are allowed to be transferred. It is always your responsibility not to sell or transfer shares that have a lock-in period.

Is the discount on employee shares tax-free?

Some companies offer discounts on the shares they offer to their employees. Until 2021 inclusive, this discount was tax free. From 2022 inclusive, this discount will be added to salaries and taxed as salary income*.

However, if you buy the shares in your share savings account (ASK), you will still get deferred tax on any gains. The tax will not be realised until you take any gains out of the share savings account.

If you opened a regular VPS account when you ordered the employee shares and think it would be worth transferring them to a share savings account (ASK) afterwards, any gains achieved in the meantime will need to be taxed. This kind of transfer is thus taxable as though you were taking profits out of the share savings account (ASK).

*The AP/SP government removed the option of tax discounts for employee share purchases, with effect from the 2022 tax year.

What are bonus shares?

How much does it cost to buy the employee shares?

When you take part in a share savings programme set up by your employer, you will usually NOT have to pay any costs for the actual purchase. Nor does it cost anything to open or hold a VPS account* or a share savings account (ASK). This is in contrast to when you buy shares out in the market via an equity trading platform.

For normal buying and selling, brokerage fees apply. Brokerage fees are the charges applied to execute a purchase or sale through a broker.

*For VPS accounts, an annual account management fee is only charged when the market value of the shares in the account exceeds NOK 100 000. See the full price list here.