Banks to watch in 2013, Alior Bank

In 2008, France’s Zaleski family used E425m from their Italian industrial group Carlo Tassara to finance a new bank in Poland, the country of their ancestors. The intention was to stay invested until 2015 or beyond. But Italy’s economic difficulties obliged the family to sell two-thirds of Alior Bank via a 2.1bn zloty (E509.7m) initial public offering (IPO) on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in December 2012.

With investors shunning bank stocks, Alior was the largest banking IPO in Europe and the second largest globally in 2012. And Poland’s economy is forecast to slow in 2013. Despite these challenges, the stock rallied after launch, anchored by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s purchase of an 8.83% stake.

“Poland is a well-regulated banking market, outside the euro, and the economy should continue growing faster than those of most other EU countries. But what investors really liked was Alior’s own story – a self-funding bank with a platform based on technology created since 2008 with no legacy networks,” says chief executive Wojciech Sobieraj.

The bank broke even 20 months after opening, and enjoyed Poland’s fastest client acquisition three years in a row, maintaining a 50:50 balance between retail and corporate business. The lean model distribution network is now the third largest in Poland, based entirely in high footfall locations.

Alior has no own-name ATMs, but offers customers free use of any ATM anywhere in the world. That has particular attractions for the many Polish expatriate workers across the EU. With the launch of Alior Sync in June 2012, it has a full-service virtual bank that includes access to credit and investment products online, complete with documentation uploading.

Nine of Poland’s top 10 banks are foreign-owned subsidiaries, often unable to upgrade technology independently of their group network. With 700m zlotys of additional capital from the IPO, Mr Sobieraj says Alior instead draws inspiration from cutting-edge local institutions in Turkey, South Africa, or RHB’s Easy Bank concept in Malaysia.

“Poland is one of the more crowded banking markets in Europe, but we do not have to compete with other banks on deposit pricing, because we can offer to all our customers the kinds of services that other banks reserve only for the affluent segment, such as money market accounts,” he says.

Mr Sobieraj is focusing on point-of-sale consumer lending, plus foreign exchange services for corporates, as growth areas in 2013. Alior has become the first Poland-headquartered bank to open a London foreign exchange trading desk, to cut brokerage costs for corporate clients.