Banking

European banks fared relatively well in 2022, when the long-running low-interest, low-inflation environment abruptly ended. Will their profitability endure through 2023 as the effects of lingering inflation, weak credit markets and lackluster economic growth hit home? S&P Global Ratings examines what banks can realistically expect in 2023.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s methodology to decide which institutions should be deemed Global Systemically Important Banks has been a cornerstone of financial regulation since 2011. Its objective is to lower the probability of G-SIBs becoming insolvent, causing wide disruption. Does the current methodology need improvement?

The advent of digital banking has benefited banks with cost savings, but at what cost to their customers, who are often deprived of the human-to-human services they enjoy at branches when using digital channels? How can banks inject the benefits of the branch into their digital offerings and the advantages of digital into their branches?

International Banker is in Belgium and joined by Mr. Johan Thijs, Chief Executive Officer of KBC Group, to discuss the banks ongoing innovative use of technology, its commitment to ESG and the global economic outlook.

Traditional banks share complicated relationships with the fintech firms that have emerged recently, boasting technological agility that gives them some commanding advantages. Increasingly, the two are cooperating more than competing, but are they doing so ethically? Or are they putting profits before the welfare of the most vulnerable?

Casting an eye over the financial industry’s 2023 landscape, the need for banks to increase their investments in deeper modernisation comes into view. Three areas at the top of their agendas should be accelerating fintech partnerships and ecosystem expansion, strengthening cyber-security defences and driving progress towards ESG goals.

nternational Banker is joined by Mr. Patricio Diez de Bonilla, Chief Executive Officer of Compartamos Banco, to discuss the bank’s work with women entrepreneurs, Micro and Small & Enterprises and increasing financial inclusion in Mexico.

Union Bank of the Philippines’ mission to become the country’s largest and most profitable consumer bank is becoming more likely by the day. Much of its success is due to its years-long digital journey, but digitalisation isn’t its end goal. Three of the bank’s top executives explain where it is today and where it aspires to be tomorrow.

Poland’s Bank Pekao’s vision of being “the best together” encompasses many goals, from augmenting profitability to increasing the ranks of its mobile-banking customers. While technology has become integral to its progress, as Mr. Jaroslaw Fuchs explains, Bank Pekao has not lost touch with its core: personal relationships with its clients.

Oliver Wyman’s study, commissioned by the European Banking Federation, of the costs of the European Union’s banking regulation and supervision on eurozone banks relative to those in the US has revealed that European banks operate under comparative disadvantages, impacting their abilities to fulfil their mandate of financing the economy.