Marcin Mikołajczyk, Deputy Chair of the KNF, attended a panel ‘The functioning of the WIBOR index and the reform of reference indicators’ at the European Financial Congress.

When talking about the benchmark reform, Marcin Mikołajczyk addressed the financial sector with the following words: ‘This is not an exercise.’ He added that each milestone specified in the reform roadmap requires the attention of participants of that process and that only by achieving each orientation point on the map it will be possible to move on to subsequent stages. ‘We have a specific end date for the reform and, from the perspective of the supervision authority, I cannot imagine any postponements in this regard. This is a signal for the market to take appropriate actions in this process and implement subsequent milestones. We would like to see the first transactions based on the new benchmark, which must appear in contracts. In this regard, the public sector, the Ministry of Finance, are open to the idea of the first issues of POLSTR-based instruments. This should give the market comfort and freedom. The public sector has chosen the benchmark in consultation with the financial sector and supports it convincingly, opening the way to the first transactions,’ said Marcin Mikołajczyk.

He also indicated that the market should start addressing the process of reducing its exposure to WIBOR. ‘The reform process will reach its end, which involves the need to build credit portfolios based on a new benchmark or on a temporarily fixed interest rate or, for some parts of the market, based on the NBP’s reference rate,’ he added.