ING: only half of Poles have savings

Poles possess only 15 to 16 percent of the financial assets that Germans or Italians have at their disposal, and only half of us have savings, according to a survey by ING lender conducted in 13 European countries. "This is a huge gap to catch up with. We are even lagging behind Greece, we have 35 percent of the Greeks' savings," said Rafał Benecki, the chief economist of ING Bank Śląski. Romanians, Bulgarians, Latvians and Slovaks have less financial assets than Poles. What is more, only 50 percent of respondents claim they have any savings. A worse situation is in Romania (36 percent) and Turkey (47 percent), according to the survey. As much as 25 percent of Poles save money for their retirement. The survey consulted 12,740 respondents, including 1037 in Poland.