Exactly. I compared these services myself about 6–7 years ago and conducted a deep dive into my own needs. I ended up choosing Ålandsbanken after closely following the portfolio management of a couple of friends; both were using discretionary asset management (täyden valtakirjan salkunhoito) at the time with approximately 30% leverage. And indeed, with this combo, they had quite a nice return history.
I remember well sitting over wine one evening after I had met with a handful of the city’s asset managers regarding my own portfolio. We calculated how this “Ålandsbanken Nordic Dividend Top List” (a kind of crown jewel product of ÅB’s asset management) offers the investor a strategically strong structure. In this structure, the stable dividend stream from 20 carefully selected companies easily covers the interest costs of a 30% investment loan even at current interest rate levels, still leaving cash flow for annual portfolio rebalancing or small over- or underweighting of different companies. The international nature of the Stockholm Stock Exchange, combined with a few picks from Finland, Norway, and Denmark, allows a purely Nordic portfolio to form a sort of “world index in miniature,” as many of the companies on the list are global market leaders whose revenue is geographically diversified across the world. This diversification, combined with the strong anchor ownership typical of many companies (such as the long-term ownership of the Wallenbergs or Industrivärden), creates a solid backbone for the portfolio that smoothes out market fluctuations and supports long-term capital appreciation. Personally, I believe that with a Nordic focus, professional asset management is capable of weighting investments on such a concentrated top list in a way that the return beats the index—and at least for me, it has been 1–4 percentage points above it for a long time.
The cost-effectiveness of such an asset management model is highlighted when considering that asset management fees and investment loan interest are both fully deductible in capital gains taxation. As I understand it, a fairly typical asset management fee for a smaller portfolio is around the 0.6% + VAT level (which drops lower at around one million euros), and the asset management fee including VAT actually shrinks to only about 0.50% after the tax deduction benefit. Correspondingly, an investment loan tied to the 12-month Euribor with a total interest rate of, say, 3.5% actually costs the investor only about 2.3% after the tax benefit. When these net costs are proportioned to the portfolio’s return potential, the package rises above traditional funds in its risk-adjusted competitiveness: a moderate and, in my opinion, very realistically achievable 7–8% market return is enough with 30% leverage and tax benefits to easily raise the return on equity (ROE) to the 10% level or even above. This “tax leverage” means in practice that the risk-adjusted net return remaining for the investor is optimized significantly more efficiently than a purely debt-free portfolio. This is, at least for me, the reason why I have been involved for a long time, and I believe it is behind the satisfaction of many customers, in addition to the quality of service and a few other perks 
Ålandsbanken also offers asset management implemented entirely with ETF products, or they can be used to build a portion of the portfolio alongside direct stocks. From what I’ve observed in my own circle of acquaintances, a typical model is to have direct stocks from the Nordics and handle international diversification via ETF products.
ÅB has clearly made a strategic choice that they are about long-term asset management tailored to the customer’s needs, rather than a trading platform for those who want to trade stocks and ETFs actively. And in this, ÅB certainly performs well, and at least for the people I know, this has brought quite good returns for a long time. Many then have a Nordnet portfolio or similar for their investment hobby, but at least for me, these serve completely different needs: ÅB provides the engine room for my core wealth, which ticks away with compound interest in the background, while on the hobby side, I can play this fun game where success has varied a bit from year to year I am strongly of the opinion that when building the core of a portfolio for the long term, it’s worth looking at an option like this, and many have been satisfied with it.
These are the kinds of thoughts that come to mind.