Safe Bank

During the global financial crisis, regional banks – dependent on local savings and only able to lend these savings to customers within their respective regions – helped avoid a credit crunch in some countries; while in others, they did not fulfil this function. This paper elaborates governance structures that influenced the success of regional banking systems in Spain, with regard to regulation principles, the overall economic and political structures, and self-organisation of regional banks. With respect to the high importance of the decentralised banking sector in Germany, the paper compares the state of decentralised banking between Spain and Germany, concluding that the regional principle in Germany, a decentralized state structure with mechanisms of regional balance, and the self-governance of regional banks are important factors.

Traditional cooperative banks are considered as locally and socially embedded, lending to local clients from locally collected deposits and financing the local economy.. To offset their disadvantage due to their insufficient size, they exploit the information advantage deriving from their geographical proximity to their clients and the advantages of their peculiar corporate governance deriving from the member-ownership. This paper examines the relevant theories on cooperative finance, while examining the underlying geographical and corporate governance aspects in a less advanced transition economy environment. Governments’ preference towards commercial banking and at the same time their negligence towards the cooperatives in general led to a loose financial regulation of the sector. The limits of cooperatives’ corporate governance and demutualization intensify when loosing social/local embeddedness. Cooperative banks, located in the periphery with insufficient socio-economic conditions to develop closer relationships with borrowers accelerate capital flight from their regions. Commercial cooperatives entering new markets show higher lending activity but have more non-performing loans due to the lost information advantage.

Cooperative banks have to consider their institutional and commercial development in order to be a full-fledged and relevant part of the banking system. This implies to offer carefully-designed financial products according to the level of development of their members/customers, of the regions and of the financial system in which they are embedded. The paper analyses the emergence of rural cooperative banking structures in Russia that developed after 1990 by referring to Chick/Dow`s »stages-of-banking-model« and issues of corporate governance. The analysis suggests that the institutions need to achieve further elements of modern banking for becoming significant market players in the country. In addition, the regulation and supervision by the Russian government has to be balanced vis-à-vis the size and importance of single rural credit cooperatives in comparison to other – by far larger – elements of the financial system.

The main purpose of the paper is an attempt to assess the effects of introducing a bank levy in Poland on selected indicators of the banking sector using the difference-in-differences method. The employment of the difference-in-differences method does not result is strict findings regarding the incidence of the newly introduced bank levy. Although we observe negative effects on ROA, the value of assets, and the value of loans, and positive effects on the number of employees, our results are not statistically significant.

The objective of the research was to identify and select homogeneous segments of consumers in terms of their competence on the market of the financial services, as well as to evaluate the influence of the consumers’ economic competence on the relations with banks. The sociodemographic features as well as the place that the consumer occupies within the social structures provide a poor explanation of the evaluation of the banks. Opinions about banks are poorly correlated with the socio-economic status of the consumer. There is a weak relationship between the economic status of the consumer and his/her economic competence. There is a strong correlation between the economic competence of a consumer and the overall evaluation of the banks. Four homogeneous groups of consumers were selected in terms of economic competence: Self-excluded (17%), Uninterested (48%), Second-raters (30%), and Leaders (6%). The segmentation was conducted using latent class analysis (LCA). The latent class analysis enabled one to identify the subtypes of the interconnected features which are unobserved in the traditional model. The source of the empirical data is comprised of the field research results conducted by the CAPI method on a nationwide representative sample of the residents of Poland, N=3000.

The fundamental ideas and values of the social economy find their expression in the goals of social enterprises and in the ways of their activity. However, they are not the only determinants of their social activity. Diversified financial resources are also necessary to stimulate the creation and development of these enterprises. The objective of the paper is to indicate to what extent social enterprises in Poland use various sources of funding their activity, compared to chosen European countries and world-wide. The analyses were carried out on the basis of data from international SEFORIS reports, covering 1000 social enterprises in Hungary, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, Great Britain, Russia and China and a sample of 412 Polish social enterprises. The findings of analyses indicate that revenues from business activity are significant financial source of social enterprises in many European countries, including Poland.  However, they are not the only way to gain capital. Among other forms of capital contribution, subsidies, donations or membership fees can be singled out. The share of social enterprises using those sources significantly varies in individual countries.

The article presents the outcome of the research executed by the author, which formed the position of the European Financial Congress (EFC) in relation to the Financial Stability Board’s consultative document on Funding Strategy Elements of an Implementable Resolution Plan. The position, was based on the opinions of stakeholders of Polish financial market, represented by banks, regulatory bodies, law firms and the academia.
The consultative document set out proposed guidance on the development of a plan for funding banks in resolution. The research revealed a wide array of challenges in the development of firm capabilities to facilitate the execution of the funding strategy in resolution. Additional issues were raised regarding relevant aspects for estimating liquidity needs in resolution process. There were indicated numerous obstacles to the mobilisation of assets that could be used as collateral for particularly private sector backstop sources of funding. All those blocking points could be removed by public sector support funding, subject to certain conditions. Moreover, there are a number of actions that could be taken by G-SIBs and authorities to support the development and implementation of resolution funding and there are also some other aspects of funding strategy which shall be also considered.

Credit risk assessment is an inherent component of banking activity and it is crucial to analyse time aspect of credit risk. During that assessment banks ought to use only reliable documents to achieve reasonable results. Financial statements should not be the one and only data source support loan decision but they are indispensable.
This study is a part of research trend assessing auditors’ independence. The purpose of it was twofold. Firstly, to determine if there exists significant dependence between business continuity evidenced by bankruptcies and going-concern warnings paragraphs (GCW) in auditors’ opinion. Secondly, to examine possible interrelation of existence GCW in auditors’ opinion and non-audit fees earned by these auditors. The research question for this paper is whether banks and other creditors may still base on financial statements and auditor’s opinions. To the limitation that the aim of this paper was not to give clear answer which measure of going-concern risk is most appropriate, it presents outcomes of an investigation of a sample of companies quoted on Warsaw Stock Exchange (Poland) main market, that submitted request for bankruptcy to the court register between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2013.