Poland reinforces its position as the key banking market in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE15)

WARSAW, Poland - July 29, 2014 - PRLog -- According to the TOP200 banks report, banking assets in CEE15* topped 1.04 billon EUR, after increasing by ~1% in 2013. The recent growth in CEE assets is a result of positive developments in Poland, Czech Republic and in few smaller peripheral countries including: Albania, BH and FYROM. In contrast, banking markets in Slovenia and Hungary continued to contract being affected by structural problems and unfavourable regulatory or fiscal environments.

CEE15 banking markets continue to be dominated by foreign investors with: UniCredit, Erste, Raiffeisen and KBC controlling a combined 28% of total banking assets in the region. The fifth major banking group in CEE15 is Poland's PKO Bank Polski group with a regional market share of 5.3%. The TOP200 CEE league table is led by two Polish banks: PKO (assets of EUR 47.3 billion) and Bank Pekao (assets of EUR 37.4 billion), followed by the Czech major bank ČSOB (assets of EUR 33.6 billion).

Despite recently observed convergence trends, there are still significant differences among CEE countries in terms of banking intermediation levels. While banking assets per capita exceed 20k EUR in Slovenia, the benchmark is over 6 times lower for Albania or Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Banking assets per capita in CEE15 countries (as of 2012, in thousand EUR)

Country

Bank assets per capita 2013,

in EUR ‘000

Change

2007-2013,

in %

Slovenia

20.7

-1%

Czech Republic

17.8

32%

Estonia

14.9

-2%

Latvia

14.5

6%

Croatia

12.4

17%

Slovakia

11.5

27%

Hungary

10.6

2%

Poland

8.8

52%

CEE15 Average

8.6

30%

Lithuania

7.6

9%

Bulgaria

6.0

50%

Romania

4.0

25%

Serbia

3.5

25%

Macedonia

3.5

75%

BiH

3.4

25%

Albania

3.2

66%

Source: Inteliace Research

The outlook for most CEE banking markets remains positive.  The level of financial intermediation across CEE is still extremely low if compared to Western Europe and the gap is expected to narrow gradually. Nevertheless, factors like hostile fiscal policy (case Hungary), economic rebalancing (case Slovenia) or poor supervision (case Bulgaria) are temporarily weighing on selected countries.

For more information on recent developments in CEE banking sectors, please refer to the publication "Top 200 banks in Central and Eastern Europe 2014," available at: http://www.inteliace.com/en/00128_TOP200_banks_in_CEE_2014_ad.html