Poland’s Financial Supervision Authority was established in September
2006 and Stanisław Kluza was appointed Chairman for a five-year term.
His credentials as an economist are excellent. He graduated from the
Warsaw School of Economics, holds a doctorate in economic science,
monetary policy and statistics, and was previously a director and chief
economist of Bank Gospodarki Żywnościowej S.A.
Kluza began by explaining that the concept of integrating the
supervision of financial institutions in Poland had been in the air for
quite a long time. ‘However, there were a number of questions that
needed to be addressed,’ he said, ‘the most important one being whether
or not such supervision should be based within the Central Bank (the
NBP) or outside it.’
The government concluded that financial supervision should take place
outside the Central Bank, because the Bank’s main role is to ‘defend
the value of the currency and keep inflation under control. ‘The
Central Bank’s priority should be to set targets which serve to
maintain price stability in a country,’ he said.
If the Central Bank had the responsibility of running monetary policy
as well as financial supervision, he argued, then that financial
supervision would be applied for the purpose of running monetary
policy, a situation Kluza did not feel comfortable with. ‘In Poland we
observed that some restrictions or regulations relating to credits and
loans in foreign exchange were in some cases applied just to alter
monetary policy.’
He admitted, however, that in Poland the concept of establishing the
Financial Supervision Authority outside of the NBP had created a lot of
tension. Indeed, some have questioned how independent from governmental
pressure the Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) will turn out to be.
The government’s decision to set up the KNF was contested both by the
NBP and bankers. (Interestingly, since this talk the government has
appointed a new NBP President.) They maintained that the new authority
was centralising three independent authorities into one organisation
fully controlled by the Premier. Even the Central European Bank
criticised the downgrading of the role of the NBP.
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The more independent both institutions are the better the cooperation,
Kluza believes. ‘It will be easier to establish areas of
responsibilities and point the one responsible for a possible failure,’
he said. ‘Two independent institutions through close cooperation are
able to achieve much better results than in a superior-subordinate type
of relation.’
Kluza said that in discussions of EU interest groups made up of CEOs
and CEFs etc. there was strong pressure to integrate supervision in
order to get one strong clear supervision policy within EU structures,
which would be managed by one strong authority, one head and for the
model to be consistent in all countries, i.e. one clear policy to be
represented by one international committee.
Until recently in Poland there were three supervision authorities: one
for insurance, one for banking and one for the capital market (or stock
exchange) but in Kluza’s opinion it often happened they were talking at
cross-purposes and were not consistent.
Summing up, he argued that with a number of supervision authorities
operating on the market there were a number of standards applicable to
just one supervised sector, whereas consolidation allowed a transfer of
standards between the sectors. In other words, consolidation of the
supervision authorities means integration of standards, ‘which is
important for all the players of the financial market.’
More information: www.knf.gov.pl
This article first appeared in "COntact International Business Voice" issue 1/07 (77) - Spring 2007
Photos in this section: Maria Kowalewska, BPCC
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