I am a foreigner living in Finland for 8 years now. I’m married to a Finn and have Finnish children. I have a fairly good employment and decided to buy a house. I booked a meeting with OP bank in Tampere City centre for a loan application. I easily qualified for the loan and had an ASP account while my Finnish wife was unemployed. When we showed up for the meeting they informed us that the English speaking person was not available and a Finnish speaking person will take over instead with someone translating for me. When we explained everything to the loan officer she started talking to my wife and for some reason the translator stopped translating. This continued for a while and when I intruppted and asked my wife, she explained that they were telling her to ask for 50% of the house. My wife had no savings and did not have the intention of taking a loan but they insisted that she should have 50%. They even said which is untrue that ASP account doesn’t qualify without her who did not have an ASP account. Instead they insisted I add her to my ASP account.
Not only was this unprofessional but it crossed a lot of boundaries. Very disappointed in Finlands banking personell, apparently it’s systematic as I’ve heard of similar experiences.