Conservatism Pags Off At Pekao

摘要

The financial crisis has made a virtue of conservative lending policies. And in Poland s relatively robust banking sector, few institutions have been more conservative than Bank Pekao. Unlike some of its rivals, Pekao, which is 59.28 percent-owned by Italy's UniCredit, has not extendec foreign currency mortgages since 2003, except to borrowers who derive their income from abroad. Banks that did make a large percentage of mortgages in euros or Swiss francs did so because such loans carry much lower interest rates - 4.25 percent for Swiss franc mortgages in mid-2008, compared with 7.7 percent for ztoty loans. But the sharp slide of the Polish currency - it has fallen by 38 percent against the euro since July - has suddenly made those loans much more expensive and exposed lenders to a higher risk of default.