Best bank: LHV Pank
Strong financial growth, digital advancements and marked improvements in customer activity and product usage characterised LHV Pank’s performance in Estonia in 2025.
The bank delivered significant growth across its core business lines, with loans and deposits each increasing by 11% over the year, taking customer deposits to €7 billion and the loan portfolio to €4.7 billion. Customer numbers rose by 8% to approximately 492,000, while transaction volumes increased by close to 10%.
Product development focused on practical use cases in daily banking. The introduction of a cross-bank payment request function enabled customers to initiate payments across multiple Estonian banks through pre-filled links and QR codes, extending functionality beyond the bank’s own customer base.
A redesigned onboarding journey integrated salary transfer into account opening, contributing to an increase in activation rates from 34% in the first half of the 2025 to 48% by the end of the year, and reducing the time required for customers to become active to 1.7 months.
A subscription-based Premium proposition combined pricing and benefits across banking, investment and lending products into a single monthly fee, attracting 6,000 customers in the first few months after the launch. This contributed to a 22% increase in customers using at least three products and a 51% year-on-year rise in monthly fee income.
Corporate activity expanded alongside retail initiatives, including more than €60 million of energy-efficiency financing for 130 apartment buildings, while enhancements to e-commerce payments introduced real-time fraud warnings linked to national blacklists.
