Poland’s largest bank, PKO Bank Polski (PKO BP), has announced plans to establish a representative office in Lithuania.
“Lithuania and Sweden will be the next countries where PKO Bank Polski will operate – this time through a representative office,” Polish media quoted Marek Radzikowski, the bank’s vice-president responsible for operations and international banking.
Speaking at a press conference in Frankfurt, he explained why the bank had selected Sweden and Lithuania:
“We take into account a wide range of indicators – from macroeconomic to microeconomic – and we analyse the activities of companies operating in these markets, including, of course, Polish firms. We also assess the risks.”
According to Radzikowski, the bank’s strategy foresees the opening of eight new overseas units by 2027 – four branches and four representative offices. Specific steps in the bank’s international expansion are expected to be announced at the turn of 2025 and 2026.
“This is an ambitious plan, given the current pace of our international network’s growth. We are already well advanced in our analysis, but today we can announce two locations where we will establish a presence in the coming months – Lithuania and Sweden,” he said.
The vice-president added that the model was financially sound: “Polish businesses are expanding abroad, and we want to support them. This is a financially viable business initiative.”
He also noted that PKO Bank Polski is frequently invited to join international banking consortia.
Lithuania’s Economy and Innovation Minister, Lukas Savickas, welcomed the announcement.
“A Polish bank means more competition, new opportunities, and greater confidence in our economy. Lithuania is strengthening as a regional centre for finance and innovation. The government, together with the President and the Bank of Lithuania, has worked hard to ensure PKO BP chose Lithuania for its expansion,” he wrote on social media.
Gediminas Šimkus, head of the Bank of Lithuania, told BNS that the move was the result of years of consistent work by national authorities to attract international players to the country’s banking sector.
“We expect that, in the longer term, this decision will boost competition in the banking sector and benefit consumers,” he said.
PKO BP already operates in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania.
At the end of 2023, PKO Bank Polski informed Poland’s financial regulator of its intention to provide services in Lithuania without establishing a permanent office. At that time, it said it had no plans to open a branch in the country.
Over the past two years, Lithuanian officials have repeatedly said that a new foreign bank was preparing to enter the market. However, this did not materialise, and in December last year Germany’s Commerzbank opened only a representative office in Vilnius.
In August 2023, Šimkus revealed that Commerzbank and Pekao – another major Polish bank – had notified Lithuanian regulators of plans to expand in the country. He stressed that foreign banks could establish themselves in Lithuania in different forms and that their intentions were serious.
In July 2023, then-Polish President Andrzej Duda suggested during a visit to Vilnius that new Polish banks might soon enter Lithuania. A year later, President Gitanas Nausėda met PKO Bank Polski executives in Vilnius to discuss the bank’s strategy and plans.
In early 2020, Nausėda invited Pekao to Lithuania during the World Economic Forum in Davos. In early 2024, he held talks with the head of Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest commercial lender.
Banks from EU member states do not need a separate licence to operate in Lithuania. As a result, both German and Polish banks already finance certain companies in the country and are involved in its business environment in other ways.
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