Cutting interest rates will hit banks. Pekao is already raising the fees

According to “Puls Biznesu”, interest rate reductions will affect the results of the banking sector. So far, financial institutions have been able to effectively defend their interest margins, but now the profits in this respect will be clearly decreasing.

The effect of foot reduction

The newspaper reminds that Bank Pekao has already informed customers about changes in tariffs in August. From November, the fees for handling credit and load cards, cash withdrawals from ATMs, as well as cards with non -standard graphics. In the announcement, the bank emphasized that the fee update is necessary to maintain a high standard of services.

NBP data show that this is not an isolated case. The dynamics of the commission result of banks is clearly growing – in the last three months on average 4.5 percentwhile at the beginning of the year it remained at a level close to zero. At the same time, the income from interest falls – the dynamics was on average 3.5 percent to 10 percent at the beginning of the year. This means that banks are trying to compensate for their percentage of higher fees and commissions.

Bank margin

As “PB” indicates, the amount of NBP interest rates remains a key factor affecting the net margin of banks. Statistics from 2017-2025 show that foot changes explain over 85 percent margin fluctuations. The strongest relationship occurs in commercial citi (94 percent), Pekao (92 percent) and Santander (90 percent). Alior and PKO BP are less sensitive to foot changes (77 percent) and BNP Paribas (69 percent).

Experts estimate that although banks focus more and more on commission income, it will be difficult to fully balance the losses resulting from interest rate discounts. Customers, however, must be aware of the fact that growing fees and commissions will become a common practice in the sector.