Safe Bank

The article presents a breakthrough for consumer protection on the financial services market the issue of information obligations in terms of in the field of insurance products with a capital fund. Information provided to consumers is presented in the form of standardized and unified key information documents for the entire European Union. In addition to the content of the documents themselves, the obligations to provide them, review and verification, the study also includes a number of competences in this area granted to supervisory authorities at the EU level as well as in individual Member States.

In 2017 as a result of the statutory amendment in polish credit union sector, a new type of cooperatives was appeared – a small credit union. Institutions that meet the criterion of a small credit union may offer only a limited range of financial services compared to other cooperatives, however, the burdens resulting from financial supervision have been mitigated. This change has resulted of the implementation of the Constitutional Tribunal’s judgment recognizing the supervision of small credit unions as unconstitutional. The aim of the study is to assess the introduced changes in the supervision of small credit unions in conjunction with their financial condition compared to the entire credit union sector in two time span; in 2014 and 2017. The regulatory changes introduced in small credit unions are minor, their purpose was primarily to fulfill the obligation arising from the judgment CT. In 2017, there were nine small credit unions, representing over ¼ of the sector institutions, and the share of their balance sheet total in this sector was below 1%. On the other hand, small credit unions are characterized by greater stability although they have a similar profitability compare to the entire sector.

Cooperative banking is a part of the banking system, which is underestimated by many customers who often use the offer of commercial banks. In many European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Finland, cooperative banking groups operate on a large scale. Austria also belongs to these countries, where a large part of the banking sector’s assets belong to the cooperative banks from the Raiffeisen group. This banking group also has a large share in receivables and liabilities to non-financial customers. Moreover, these banks have the largest share in the total number of banks and branches in the sector. In this country there is also a second, much smaller cooperative group – folk banks, whose share in the structure of the banking sector in recent years shows declining tendencies. This article aims to present the condition of Austrian cooperative banks, as measured by profitability indicators, against the background of the results of the entire banking sector in 2010-2017 and to prove the significant share of this type of banks in banking operations in Austria.

This paper is devoted to the issue of rights and obligations related to group recovery plans of mutal solidarity systems of co-operative banks, ie. institutional protection scheme or integrated associations. The legislator allows the creation of group plans to prevent the threat of bankruptcy of banks forming the solidarity system. The group recovery plan replaces, but does not exclude, individual recovery plans for co-operative banks beloging to the mutal solidarity systems. However, the group recovery plan is not the sum of individual recovery plans of the banks forming the mutual solidarity system.Key words: co-operative banking, mutal solidarity systems of co-operative banks, institutional protection scheme, recovery plan, group recovery plan

The European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS) is being constructed as one of three basic pillars of the banking union, designed in 2012 under a crisis situation in the euro zone to increase the financial system stability and to restore the general trust to banks, as well as to prevent contagion effects in a case of a future crisis enhancement. The article is aimed at giving an overview of the evolution of the EDIS idea, characterising the recent state of organization and pointing out some pros and cons of the discussed organisational variants. There is also undertaken an attempt to formulate the possible consequences, if BFG would become the EDIS member as the Polish deposit insurance institution.

Countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) has become a key macroprudential tool used to prevent pro-cyclicality and excess credit growth. The aim of this article is to analyze the experience of EU countries which decided to set a non-zero buffer rate. Ten EU countries, where the buffer was activated in 2014-2018, have been subject to the analysis. The key part of the article is devoted to the CCyB methodology and justification of the designated authorities’ decisions. The conclusions from the research indicate a limited usefulness of the Basel methodology. The country review shows that credit gap serves only as an auxiliary indicator while decisions on CCyB rate are based on a wider set of data, including property prices, indebtedness and geopolitical risk. Furthermore, in some countries macroprudential strategies assume maintaining a non-zero CCyB rate in normal times.

The article characterizes traditional (physical) and behavioral biometrics methods, which can be applied in authentication procedures in banking on mobile devices. Moreover, the model of authentication with the use of behavioral biometric methods was presented. Such model may be used in the future banking applications. A wide overview of authentication methods in banking is presented in the article, including current state of the mobile payment market and a summary of the most important concepts and ideas connected with the authentication methods used in information systems. The text also presents practical implications resulting from the use of behavioral methods in the financial sector and the discussion over the example scenarios of proposed methods.