Poland to see first use of POLSTR in financial contracts well before end-2025 (interview)
The first use of the Polish Short Term Rate (POLSTR) index in financial instruments will take place much earlier than the planned end-2025 Treasury bond issue, and it will not be a consumer product, the head of Polish banking lobby ZBP Tadeusz Bialek told PAP Biznes.
Tadeusz Bialek explained that Polish banks have over half a year to prepare, implement new documentation, sign agreements with the Warsaw Stock Exchange benchmark rate administrator GPW Benchmark for POLSTR use, and get operationally ready.
"POLSTR will be used in financial instruments much earlier than the planned end-2025 Treasury bond issue, and it will definitely not be a consumer product," he stressed.
According to the roadmap, in the first quarter of 2026, Polish lenders will launch cash management products with the new index, and from the second quarter of 2026, mortgage agreements with POLSTR will be available.
On June 2, the administrator of interest rate benchmarks in Poland, GPW Benchmark, began publishing the POLSTR index and its composite family, fulfilling the first milestone of the updated reference rate reform roadmap.
Bialek said this process was accelerated and that the benchmark statement, required under EU BMR regulations, will soon be released to detail the index’s features and rules.
The head of Polish banking lobby concluded that the next step is the first use of POLSTR in a contract or financial instrument, at which point it will officially become a reference benchmark.
Poland's Steering Committee of the National Working Group for the reference rate reform (KS NGR) confirmed in April that all financial instruments will be converted to POLSTR by the end of 2027, with WIBOR and WIBID publication ending in early 2028.
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