Agnieszka Wachnicka, vice-president of the Polish Bank Association, said the industry is “one of the smallest in the European Union when compared to the size of the country’s GDP,” despite Poland being the bloc’s sixth-largest economy. By size, the sector ranks only “24th or 25th,” she said, as quoted by Euronews.
“It looks slightly better when measured by assets, but worse in terms of capital. This means our sector is simply too small to meet the investment needs of the Polish economy,” Wachnicka added.
The shortfall matters as Poland records one of the EU’s lowest investment rates and must finance infrastructure, transformation, digital, and defense projects.
“If our banking sector as a consortium is able to finance one project worth PLN 50 billion, but the total needs reach trillions, we still have a big job to do,” she said.
Wachnicka attributed the weak capital position to recent costly burdens, including the Swiss franc mortgage issue, loan holidays, and plans for new banking taxes.
“The sector’s equity has been significantly drained. Losses from these measures are typically written off against own funds, which means they shrink. And new proposals for additional taxes will only slow down the recovery process,” she said.
Lower own funds weigh on stability and lending capacity, she noted. Concentration limits cap the size of individual financings, and “when capital is too low, banks simply can’t engage in the largest investments.”
Paradoxically, Poland’s banks are seen as among Europe’s most modern, having leapfrogged the analog era.
“We moved very quickly to modern, electronic payment instruments. We were the first country to introduce contactless cards, and today, as many as 76% of electronic banking customers rely exclusively on mobile apps,” Wachnicka said.
She attributed this to banks’ strategic choices and consumers’ openness to innovation: “If something worked in Poland, it usually succeeded elsewhere too.”
Experts see the sector at a crossroads: digitally advanced and supporting a fast-growing economy, yet constrained by capital and regulatory pressure. To meet energy transition, digitalization, and security demands, the industry needs to strengthen its capital base and expand its capacity to finance large-scale projects.
(jh)
Source: Euronews