Poland: new regulations tighten supervision over financial market

Poland

New regulations aimed at strengthening supervision over the financial market and increasing the protection of investors recently came into effect. One of them involves an organisational change to the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (“KNF”) by extending its composition. The widened line-up includes the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (“OCCP”). This change will contribute to facilitating information flow between regulators, so the volume of proceedings before the President of OCCP is likely to increase. “I am glad that the composition of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority has been extended. This allows a broader perspective on financial market issues,” says the President of the OCCP (source: https://uokik.gov.pl/news.php?news_id=15041).


Furthermore, the new regulations allow the President of the OCCP to impose penalties on managers who deliberately violate collective consumer interests or allow their companies to use abusive clauses (in the case of managers of financial institutions these penalties can be up to PLN 5 million / approx. EUR 1.2 million, and in relation to managers of other entities they can be up to PLN 2 million /approx. EUR 480,000). According to the President of OCCP (source: https://uokik.gov.pl/news.php?news_id=15041), “We will use these new tools because our experience shows that the decisions and supervision of managers have a huge impact on company practices that violate consumer rights. This could be, for example, exercising pressure on sellers to attract as many customers as possible, even at the cost of misleading them.”

The new regulations introduce a series of other changes. These inter alia include (i) provisions on exchange of information between the KNF, its members and other bodies and (ii) provisions on taking over banks.


For more information, please get in touch with your contact person at CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang.