Interest in the market
The as-yet-unnamed bank will be a part of the Getin Holding capital group and will be built upon Introfaktor, a recently founded subsidiary of Getin's Noble Bank. This will be the fourth bank in the Getin Holding group.
Czarnecki's new bank will not operate a network of outlets. Instead, its customers will conduct their business via telephone and a network of "mobile" financial advisors. The management of the bank has already been assembled and rank-and-file employees are currently being recruited. The bank will employ approximately 200 advisors and 70 people responsible for back-office operations.
In addition to Czarnecki's bank, three other brands are planning to enter the Polish banking market this year - Alior, BWE and Allianz.
New banks are good news for Polish SMEs, according to Michał Macierzyński, an analyst from Bankier.pl. "Until now the SME market has suffered from limited access to capital," he said. He added that the presence of the new banks - apart from Allianz, which will not be targeting SMEs - would boost competition among banks for such clients.
Macierzyński said that having a network of mobile advisors was a good solution for a bank targeting small businesses. "Hardly any bank like that has an outlet network. [Czarnecki's] bank can also use the existing infrastructure of Open Finance," he said, referencing Getin Holding's financial advisory firm.
Czarnecki hit headlines a few weeks ago after revelations that he had cooperated with Poland's communist secret services in the 1980s, but Macierzyński said that this would not affect the success of the new bank. "Investors are interested in profit above all," he said.
