PKO Bank Polski among the large cap constituents on the FTSE Russell Index

It was already a year ago that the global index agency FTSE Russell announced its decision to reclassify Poland from an Advanced Emerging market to a Developed market; as a consequence, Poland was listed among the top 25 most developed global economies. The decision came into force on Monday, 24 September 2018.

Poland’s promotion from Advanced Emerging into the Developed-Markets basket is the first decision of that type taken by FTSE Russell in more than a decade. The decision stems from continuous improvement of the capital market in Poland and the uninterrupted growth of the GDP. Poland has been waiting for that decision since 2011 when it was first put on the FTSE Russell Watch List. Poland is the largest economy in Central and Eastern Europe and the only one, so far, to be included among the developed economies.

To celebrate this occasion, the representatives of the Polish companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange went to London to take part in the celebrations on the London Stock Exchange and the Polish Embassy in the United Kingdom, and in a special conference under the theme “Charting Poland’s Future: Spotlight on Growth & Innovation” which is organised by Bloomberg. Jakub Papierski, Executive Vice-President of PKO Bank Polski in charge of corporate banking and investment banking, and Filip Paszke, the head of the PKO Bank Polski Brokerage House, take an active part in those events.

The upgrade in FTSE Russell classification is a major symbolic event for both the Polish economy and PKO Bank Polski. With the dynamic growth of activity in all business segments, PKO has been consistently reinforcing its position as the unquestioned leader of the Polish banking sector. From now on, we are also the only Polish company that is present among the large cap entities on the developed market index, claims Jakub Papierski, Executive Vice-President of PKO Bank Polski.

PKO Bank Polski has been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since November 2004. It is the most valuable company on the Warsaw Stock Exchange with capitalisation in excess of PLN 50 billion. The PKO Bank Polski Group ranks among the largest financial institutions in Poland and is one of the leading financial groups in Central and Eastern Europe. PKO Bank Polski is the largest retail- and corporate bank in Poland. It is the absolute sector leader in terms of scale of business, equity, assets (nearly PLN 300 billion), customer number (more than 9 million) and distribution network.

Digital transformation of internal processes and customer services is at the heart of the development strategy of PKO Bank Polski. This is the key enabler of the change whereby the biggest bank in Poland and in the region is becoming an agile organisation which focuses on and anticipates customers’ needs while remaining an industry leader. The strategy is driven by innovative solutions created in collaboration with technology start-ups, strong growth of mobile channels and advanced data analytics, among other things. As a consequence, the bank not only cements its relationships with existing customers but it also wins new ones, especially among the younger generations.

The mobile banking application IKO is the flagship product of PKO Bank Polski that keeps getting new functionalities. In 2018, IKO was voted the number-one mobile banking app in the world as part of the UK’s Retail Banker International’s rating, leaving behind the applications of the likes of Bank of America, Capital One or JP Morgan.  This past August, the number of logins to IKO exceeded the number of logins to the iPKO transaction system, which means that the customers of PKO Bank Polski increasingly rely on mobile application as the basic tool for the management of their personal finances and contacting the bank. The customers already have more than 2.8 million IKO applications in their phones and their activity in the mobile channel keeps growing with each month. It took the customers more than 4 years to complete the first 50 million transactions in IKO; it took them merely 8 months to complete the other 50 million. Ever since the application launch in 2013, the customers have already used it to complete 113 million transactions. IKO led to the development of the mobile payments standard called BLIK.

The PKO Bank Polski Brokerage House is also the leader of its market segment, both on the secondary and primary markets. The Brokerage House turnovers in the first half of 2018 exceeded PLN 17 billion, or 8% of the market turnovers. With such a result, the PKO Bank Polski Brokerage House was number two in the ranking of brokerage houses. The Brokerage House executes nearly half of the bond trades on the market, which gives it the leader position. As at the end of June 2018, the Brokerage House maintained 132,000 securities accounts and cash accounts and 193,000 registered accounts. In terms of the securities account number, the PKO Bank Polski Brokerage House is ranked fourth among the 40 market participants (according to the data of the Central Securities Depository of Poland). This year, the PKO Bank Polski Brokerage House received the title of the 2017 Broker of the Year which is the most important award from the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The award was granted, among other things, for the organisation of the IPOs of the highest total value and the highest share in equity trading (excluding the market maker transactions) on the Main Market. The Bank was rewarded for the highest value of non-Treasury debt instrument issues on the Catalyst market and the highest value of the OTC transactions settled via KDPW_CCP.