Przemiany sektora bankowego i ich konsekwencje
Changes in the Banking Sector and Their Consequences

Summary/Abstract: Banks have played a major and not exactly honourable role in the global economic and financial crisis. Not only were banks one of the sources of this crisis but they also contributed to the diffusion of impulses for the crisis. The paper presents the evolution that banks have undergone in the last 30-40 years. The simple traditional model consisting in banks using deposits placed by households and enterprises for the purposes of granting credits (including especially investment credits for enterprises) has been replaced by a considerably more complicated model. The most important changes included the establishment of conglomerates and financial holding companies, the development of an alternative banking system, changes to the structure of credits granted by banks as well as to the sources of financing of the active bank operations, and to the process of integration of banks and financial markets. The main aim of this paper is to present how the changes in the banking sector have increased the potentially destabilizing influence of these institutions on the whole financial system and the real economy. The major reason was the increase in the systemic risk involved in the banking sector (resulting from the network of mutual interrelations and joint exposures) and intensification of the pro-cyclicality in bank lending. These threats have become fully perceivable in the years preceding the contemporary crisis and during the crisis.

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