Our regional presence

This year's national budget included significant cuts to our funding, and during the spring we reduced our workforce by around 110 full-time equivalent positions. To make better use of our resources in the new organisation, our Board decided today to decentralise customer engagement and financing decisions, while consolidating administrative management responsibilities into larger units. Our current office structure will remain unchanged.

Local customer engagement

Most of our customer-facing work takes place where you are. We will therefore give our regional offices greater authority, enabling them to make decisions on larger loans and grants closer to you. As a result, we will decide a greater proportion of funding applications regionally.

We will also strengthen our regional and local customer engagement by placing individual members of our team in relevant innovation ecosystems or areas where we do not currently have an office. We have already assigned six team members to locations across the country, and will decide on further placements in partnership with interested county authorities.

Regional cooperation and a new administrative structure

We will have six regions: South, East, West, Central, Nordland and Arctic. The regions will be administrative units under shared management. We have made specific adjustments to the regional structure in Northern Norway to reflect national priorities in the High North, long travel distances and significant regional responsibilities.

We will introduce a clearly defined leadership role for each county authority to ensure strong regional ownership and delivery.

The proposal does not involve any changes to our office structure, office closures or our geographical presence, and will not result in any further staff reductions.

Here is an overview of the regional structure, including leadership roles and office locations:

Objectives and process

This change will ensure that we remain close to our customers and county authorities, make better use of our overall capacity, and deliver more consistently with shorter processing times.

We have maintained dialogue with and involved the county authorities throughout the process, at both administrative and political levels. Their feedback has focused particularly on the need to stay close to customers, maintain strong regional ties, provide a clear point of contact with responsibility for each county, and work closely with us.

We will implement the new organisational structure and leadership roles in stages, starting in autumn 2026 and completing the rollout on 1 January 2027. One year after implementation, our board will evaluate the changes following consultation with key external and internal stakeholders.

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The Board's resolution:

1. The Board is committed to ensuring that we continue to have a presence throughout Norway. We must maintain or strengthen our regional presence so that we remain close to our customers and continue to build on these relationships.

2. We will make no changes to our current office structure. We will complement and strengthen our regional presence by expanding and further developing the placement of employees in relevant innovation ecosystems, industrial parks, business incubators and similar environments.

3. With the transfer of the business garden and incubator programmes from Siva, we now manage most of the business collaboration schemes. This gives us an opportunity to strengthen our overall offering to businesses across Norway. The Board would like us to continue this work as outlined in the supporting documents.

4. The Board wants us to strengthen our overall regional capacity by introducing a clearly defined leadership role for each county authority.

5. The Board endorses management's recommendation to increase regional credit authorisations, enabling the regions to decide a larger proportion of financing cases.

6. The Board endorses management's recommendation to establish a management structure in SNU with larger regional units and fewer managers, with specific adaptations for Northern Norway as described in section 2.9 of the supporting documentation.

7. The Board asks the administration to implement the proposed measures, including clarifying roles, governance structures and ways of working together, in close dialogue and collaboration with the county authorities.

8. The Board asks to be kept informed of progress, risks and the realisation of benefits for customers, owners and our organisation.

9. The Board requests that the changes be evaluated one year after implementation, including consultation with key external and internal stakeholders. a