According to Pekao's press release, the Polish bank was one of the two banks on the list, which did not record a decrease in capital ratios in the stress scenario.
Paweł Supernak/PAP
Polish bank Pekao is the most resilient European bank under an adverse scenario according to the results of a stress test conducted by the European Banking Authority (EBA) Pekao has announced.
On Friday, EBA published the results of its 2023 EU-wide stress test, which involved 70 banks from 16 EU and EEA countries, covering 75 percent of the EU banking sector assets.
The stress test allows supervisors to assess the resilience of EU banks over a three-year horizon under both a baseline and an adverse scenario. The adverse scenario is characterised by severe negative shocks to economic growth, higher unemployment combined with higher interest rates and credit spreads, EBA said on its website.
In terms of GDP decline, the 2023 adverse scenario is the most severe used in the EU wide stress up to now. The individual bank results promote market discipline and are used as part of the EU supervisory decision-making process, EBA added.
According to Pekao’s press release, the Polish bank was one of the two banks on the list, which did not record a decrease in capital ratios in the stress scenario. In the previous EBA stress test from July 2021, the bank took second place.
“The EBA stress test has once again shown that Bank Pekao is resilient to challenges that have not been lacking in recent years, enough to mention the pandemic or the war just across our border,” Pekao CEO Leszek Skiba said as citied in the statement.
“I am proud that our consistent prudential approach to risk and excellent liquidity have again secured us a leading position among the safest banks in Europe,” he added.
Bank Pekao said in the press release that in line with this year’s stress test results, the banks consolidated coefficient of Tier 1 common equity (CET 1) would be at the level of 18.6 percent in 2025 in the base scenario and 15.4 percent in the extreme scenario.
Bank Pekao SA, founded in 1929, is one of the largest financial institutions in Central and Eastern Europe and the second largest universal bank in Poland with PLN 293 billion (EUR 66.36 billion) in assets. Bank Pekao serves over 6.4 million customers. Since 1998, the bank has been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.