(Reuters) – Poland’s Alior Bank plans to join the fast growing digital payments market at the turn of the year with Alior Pay, a key part of a two year strategy to be announced in early 2023, CEO Grzegorz Olszewski said on Friday.
The bank did not give details of the new service, which it announced alongside a third-quarter net loss of 62.6 million zlotys ($13.1 million).
That compared with a profit of 150.4 million zlotys a year earlier, and was due in part to the payment holidays enacted by Poland’s government to help borrowers cope with higher interest rates. Rival Pekao also reported a loss on Thursday.
Despite a deteriorating economic backdrop, Alior said it did not expect its 2022 cost of risk – money set aside against risky loans – would exceed last year’s 1.6%.
“In terms of the cost of risk, cumulatively for the three quarters of 2022 (we have) the level of 1.47% (…) We expect this year to end at around 1.6%, despite the deteriorating economic situation,” said Tomasz Miklas, deputy CEO for risk management.
He added that in the event of a “moderate economic crisis”, he did not expect an increase in the cost of risk above 2% in the coming quarters.
($1 = 4.7939 zlotys)
(Reporting by Maria Gieldon and Mateusz Rabiega in Gdansk; Editing by Mark Potter)
