Profil:
BNP Paribas Bank Polska SABNP Paribas BP lender hopes to boost lending and will optimise employment
Listed lender BNP Paribas BP is counting on further growth in mortgage and cash loan sales and an increase in its retail loan portfolio in the coming quarters. The bank will continue to optimise employment at its headquarters and aims to complete the process of closing accounts of permanently inactive customers by the end of the year, the bank's CEO, Przemek Gdanski told during a conference.
"As far as CIB, or Corporate and Institutional Banking, is concerned, we have seen significant growth. In retail banking, we have reversed the trend – due to the low level of mortgage lending, volumes were falling in previous quarters, but this trend has reversed in this quarter," said the bank's CEO, Przemek Gdanski.
He added that the bank expects further growth in mortgage lending.
The bank's gross loans amount to PLN 89.3 billion (EUR 20.9 bln), up 1 percent year on year and down 0.3 percent quarter on quarter.
BNP reported that the retail loan portfolio stabilised due to an increase in consumer loans (no change quarter on quarter) and a slight decrease in institutional loans (down 0.7 percent quarter on quarter). This decrease was caused by large-scale repayments of loans in the individual farmers' portfolio, partially offset by an increase in the CIB portfolio.
"In SME corporate banking, this result is not satisfactory. This is the result of several factors. Firstly, there have been several significant corporate loan repayments, the most significant of which was one that the bank sought and managed to obtain full repayment from a customer whose risk profile we considered to be worrying. In addition, we are seeing repayments of preferential liquidity loans to farmers. Hence, in SME corporate banking, the dynamics are not what we would like them to be. However, I consider the very fact that these losses have been offset by new transactions to be a good sign for the future," said Gdanski.
"We believe that there are no grounds for the bank to be unable to boost lending," added Piotr Konieczny, the bank's deputy CEO.
The CEO said that the bank is continuing the process of cleaning up its database of inactive retail customers and closing their accounts.
"We will be working intensively in this area until the end of the year and plan to complete this so-called database clean-up on a significant scale by the end of this year," said Gdanski.
seb/ nl/ han/
