Ratings On Three Polish Banks Affirmed Upon Resilience To The Pandemic; Outlook On Alior Bank To Stable

The pandemic-induced downturn hit the Polish economy less hard than most other European countries and we expect Polish banks to manage the associated expected increase in nonperforming loans, even after the government's support programs expire. Litigation risks related to the legacy foreign-currency (FX)-denominated mortgage loans could still depress capitalization by a significant amount. Banks' profitability is already constrained by historically low interest rates and an asset-based banking tax. We affirmed our ratings on mBank, Alior Bank, and Bank Pekao. The negative outlook on mBank indicates that it remains highly exposed to the legacy mortgage FX-loans litigation risk. The outlooks on Alior and Bank Pekao are stable. FRANKFURT (S&P Global Ratings) June 24, 2021--S&P Global Ratings today affirmed its ratings on

...June 24, 2021 - The pandemic-induced downturn hit the Polish economy less hard than most other European countries and we expect Polish banks to manage the associated expected increase in nonperforming loans, even after the government's support programs expire. - Litigation risks related to the legacy foreign-currency (FX)-denominated mortgage loans could still depress capitalization by a significant amount. Banks' profitability is already constrained by historically low interest rates and an asset-based banking tax. - We affirmed our ratings on mBank, Alior Bank, and Bank Pekao. - The negative outlook on mBank indicates that it remains highly exposed to the legacy mortgage FX-loans litigation risk. The outlooks on Alior and Bank Pekao are stable. FRANKFURT (S&P Global Ratings) June 24, 2021--S&P Global Ratings today affirmed its ratings on three Polish banks, as shown below: - mBank: '###/A-2', with a negative outlook. - Alior Bank S.A.: '##/B', with the outlook revised to stable from negative....

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