Denmark’s elderly are EU’s online banking trailblazers

Denmark’s elderly are EU’s online banking trailblazers
By Chris Harris
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Four-in-five of Denmark’s over-65s say they use online banking — far more than their peers elsewhere in the bloc.

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Denmark’s elderly are the most digitally-savvy pensioners in the European Union, latest figures show.

Four-in-five of the country’s over-65s say they use online banking, a proportion that is nearly three times the bloc’s average, 28%.

It reflects a general trend in Scandinavia: two-thirds of Finland’s elderly and 71% of Sweden’s also handle their finances online.

The proportion of elderly people who go online to manage their money is under 10% in Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, Hungary and Romania.

More generally the number of people who use online banking in the EU has doubled in the last decade, according to Eurostat data.

Fifty-one percent now use it, up from 25% in 2007.

A greater share of young people — 55% of 16 to 29-year-olds across the EU — say they use online banking.

It ranges from 93% in the Netherlands to just 6% in Bulgaria.

Luxembourg is the only country in the EU where the proportion of elderly people using online banking (66%) is greater than that of the younger generation (63%).

But the increasing digitisation of people’s banking experience is not without its risks.

The European Banking Federation says cyber criminals are trying to take advantage of this shift by exposing security loopholes.

The federation quotes a Europol assessment that claims cases of cybercrime now outstrip instances of traditional criminality in some EU countries.

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