Corporate Banking

Corporate customers may use numerous financing and transactional banking products relying on the expert support of the BNP Paribas Group.

The basic products and services offered to corporate customers are:

• cash management – current accounts, payroll accounts, custody accounts, escrow accounts, cash management, payments, Cash Pool, balance consolidation, micro-CDMs, cards: debit, charge, credit;
• deposits – placement accounts, progressive accounts, deposits: overnight, term, negotiated;
• financing – current operations, investments, financing for agro companies;
• trade services and financing – bank guarantees, documentary letters of credit, documentary collection, export financing; export/import letters of credit, discounting of letters of credit, debt financing, nostro and loro guarantees
• online banking – BiznesPl@net, Mobile BiznePl@net, MultiCash, Connexis, FX Pl@net;
• mid-caps structured finance – financing acquisitions, high capital expenditure as well as structured bilateral or syndicated loans of PLN 20-200 million;
• real estate financing – financing office, retail and warehouse space;
• investment banking services – provided by specialists, including merger and acquisition advisory support, project funding, capital markets and debt securities;
• financial market products – including spot and forward transactions made by the Bank’s dealers or via the FX Pl@net and Dealer electronic currency platforms;
• factoring – offered in cooperation with BNP Paribas Faktoring Sp. z o.o.;
• leasing services – i.a. leasing of machinery and equipment, technological lines, means of transport, real estate offered in cooperation with BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions;
• public sector services – organising the issue of municipal bonds, forfeiting and dedicated cash management solutions.

The Bank’s activities in the area of Corporate Banking in 2019 focused on further integration with RBPL Core and business-operational transformation. The transformation applies to all aspects of customer service, including the implementation of new organizational structures in operations, optimization and digitization of processes, and the development of new IT tools increasing customer convenience in using the products and services offered by the Bank. The final stage of the Bank’s integration was the migration of IT systems and the cohesion of the Bank’s operations. This operation took place as planned on 11 November.

As part of the above-mentioned transformation and integration processes, a number of initiatives and improvements were implemented in 2019, including:

• the creation of a Business Service Center (BSC) which will be the unit dedicated for after-sales services offered to clients from the area of Corporate Banking in the centralized model;
• optimization and standardization (with processes used in the SME segment) of key processes, including new, simplified sales and after-sales documentation;
• the visual identification of IT systems and electronic documents was changed in connection with the change of the Bank’s name,
• the product offer for customers was unified.

From a business perspective, 2019 was a continuation of the Bank’s strategy, which in the area of Corporate Banking assumes:

• acquisition and rapid activation of new customers, as a basis for further development of cooperation,
• development of customer transnationality and increasing the number of products used by customers (cross-sell of individual product lines),
• acquiring and providing services for international companies,
• building the position of a leading bank in foreign trade and specialized finance (trade finance / specialized finance, global trade solutions)

An important step in the Bank’s development in 2019 was further development of online banking system for business customers (BiznesPl@net) through changes on several levels:

• further development of the self-service zone: the modules of electronic product applications and after-sales instructions were launched;
• new functions previously used by RBPL Core clients in the Online Biznes system have been added, thus preparing the BiznesPl@net system for the migration of exRBPL clients. These include: the addition of predefined templates for exporting MT940 statements, changes to the statement generation module, changes to the account operations history, the addition of a function for adding a single transfer to a package, changes to the card module;
• changes related to PSD2 were introduced, i.a. enabling the launch of the API production environment for selected third parties (TPP) for testing purposes;
• changes related to the IT System of the Clearing House, resulting from the amendment to the Tax Code in the scope of preventing the use of the financial sector for fraud (Journal of Laws of 2017, item 2491). The changes concern the blocking of entrepreneurs’ accounts in accordance with the decisions of the National Tax Administration in the mode provided for by the Act.

The final stage of the Bank’s integration was the transfer of customer data to a single system, the integration of IT systems, and the cohesion of the Bank’s operations. This operation took place as planned on 11 November.

In 2019 the Bank continued a series of meetings and information, education and business workshops which supported small and medium enterprises and corporations in the international expansion of the so-called Foreign Trade Program (FTP). The main aim of FTP is sharing knowledge about foreign markets, supporting Polish entrepreneurs and showing positive examples of foreign expansion into new markets. Last year, the Foreign Trade Program focused on the markets of Africa and the Far East. This year’s edition of the program was dedicated to European markets: France, Italy and Belgium and the markets of the Arabian Peninsula. In total, 31 meetings with 3.5 thousand Corporate Banking and SME clients were organized in 2019.

Bank guarantees and letters of credit

The Bank offers fast and comprehensive services related to guarantees and letters of credit, based on dedicated IT solutions.

In 2019, at the request of Corporate Banking customers, the Bank:

• issued 6,943 bank guarantees, with a total value of PLN 2,419.6 million.
• opened 2,547 import letters of credit with a total value of PLN 1,248.8 million and handled 820 export letters of credit with a total value of PLN 2,642.6 million issued by other banks for those customers.

As at 31 December 2019, Corporate Banking deposits amounted to PLN 23,955 million and were PLN 799 million, i.e. 3% higher than at the end of 2018. The share of overnight deposits in the portfolio increased by 4 p.p., while the volume of term deposits dropped by 4 p.p. compared to December 2018.

As at 31 December 2019 the value of consolidated loans and advances portfolio in the Corporate Banking segment amounted to PLN 23,040 million, i.e. 7% less than at the end of 2018, primarily as a result of the sale of an organised part of the Bank’s enterprise earmarked for conducting factoring activities to BGŻ BNP Paribas Faktoring sp. z o.o. (decrease in the volume of factoring receivables by PLN 1,152 million).

In 2019 the gross result of Corporate Banking accounted to PLN 587.7 million and was 141% higher than in the previous year (PLN 244.3 million in 2018).

The comparability of results was affected by the finalization, on 31 October 2018, of the acquisition of the core business of Raiffeisen Bank Polska S.A. The profit or loss of the Bank’s Capital Group for 2018 does include RBPL’s income and expenses only for two months.

The banking income of Corporate Banking in 2019 was PLN 1,079 million, which is 87% more than in the corresponding period of 2018. It represented 23.9% of the total net income on the Group’s banking activity in the analysed period.