Bank Pekao plans to present new strategy at end-Q1 2025

"We will be targeting the end of the first quarter [of 2025] to talk about it publicly," Stypulkowski told the conference when asked about the new strategy.

The acting CEO reported on Thursday that the bank had introduced a digital mortgage process. In the first stage, Pekao is making it available to bank customers with an employment contract applying individually and for a secondary market property to apply for a loan. In subsequent stages, Pekao wants to expand the target group for this service.

Pekao expects that the Polish macro data will not support deep interest rate cuts. The bank expects rates to fall by around 100 bps next year.

According to the lender, double-digit investment growth is possible in the market in 2025 and will be concentrated in industries such as energy, transport and manufacturing.

Pekao assessed on Thursday that it is on track to deliver on its current strategy for 2021-2024.

Pekao's cost/income ratio is now 34.7 percent, which means it is better than the target of going below 42 percent at the end of 2024, while ROE in the third quarter was 21.4 percent against the 10 percent planned for the end of 2024 in the strategy (assuming a Poland reference rate of 0.1 percent).

The cost of risk in the third quarter of 2024 fell to 43 basis points from 51 in the second quarter. The strategic target at the end of the strategy period in 2024 is a range of 50-60 basis points.

The strategic target of 3.2 million active mobile banking customers has already been exceeded, with the number of people actively using mobile banking reaching 3.4 million at the end of September.

In July, the bank's supervisory board appointed Cezary Stypulkowski as CEO from October 5, subject to approval from Poland's financial market regulator KNF.

seb/ ao/