Process of the preparation

[2-1] Powszechna Kasa Oszczędności Bank Polski Spółka Akcyjna (PKO Bank Polski S.A. or the Bank) is a household name. The Bank has been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) since 2004. The Bank is a joint-stock company entered into the National Court Register under number KRS 0000026438. The shareholding structure is presented in Table 27. The Bank’s registered office is located in Warsaw.

The Bank, together with its subsidiaries, creates the Powszechna Kasa Oszczędności Bank Polski Spółka Akcyjna Group (the PKO Bank Polski S.A. Group or the Bank’s Group). At the end of 2022, the Bank’s Group comprised the parent entity (the Bank), 12 direct subsidiaries and indirect subsidiaries (see Group chapter).

The Bank’s Group operates in the territory of the Republic of Poland. Moreover, through its subsidiaries it operates in the territory of Ukraine, Sweden and Ireland. It also operates branches in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.

[2-2] The Powszechna Kasa Oszczędności Bank Polski Spółka Akcyjna Group (the PKO Bank Polski S.A. Group or the Bank’s Group) and Powszechna Kasa Oszczędności Bank Polski Spółka Akcyjna (PKO Bank Polski S.A. or the Bank) have prepared a Statement on the non-financial information (the Statement), which forms a separate part of the Directors’ Report. The individual issues have been presented in the Statement with regard to the Bank’s Group, with the Bank highlighted. The Bank and the Bank’s Group satisfy the criteria of an entity that is required to draw up the Statement.

The Bank and the Bank’s Group has reported in accordance with the GRI Standards for the period from 1 January to 31 December 2022 (revised Universal Standards 2021, which came into force on 1 January 2023) and in accordance with the non-financial reporting requirements specified in the Accounting Act.

[2-3] The Bank’s Group publishes such statements and financial reports annually. The Statement presents the operations of the PKO Bank Polski S.A. Group in the period from 1 January to 31 December 2022. The previous Statement was prepared for the year 2021 and published on 24 February 2022. The contact for topics related to the Statement is as follows: esg@pkobp.pl.

[2-4] The Bank reports an adjustment of data to the Statement on non-financial information for 2021: in table 45, the value of total emissions (Scope 1+2+3) for the Bank’s Group of the Bank in 2021 should amount to 54,228 MgCO2e instead of 41,637 MgCO2e.

[2-5] The Statement on non-financial information for 2022 is not subject to an external audit.

[2-14] The Statement was approved by the Management Board and the Supervisory Board of the Bank.

[2-6] The Bank, creating the value, cooperates with the suppliers of goods and services (upstream). The recipients of the value generated by the Bank are its customers (downstream). The Bank provides services to 11.6 million retail customers and 17.7 thousand corporate customers. In the process of creating the value, the Bank cooperates with agents and intermediaries and with entities to which it delegates some tasks (outsourcing).

For a description of relations with business partners, please refer to section Customer relationships.

[3-1] The Bank monitors on an ongoing basis the impact of its activities on the environment. The following are used for the assessment:

There were no significant changes in business activities, business relationships and the manner of operations conducted in 2022. The list of relevant stakeholders has not changed as well.

As a result of the conducted analyses, 13 topics were identified in which the Bank’s Group has a significant impact on the environment and stakeholders. Following the GRI standard, the criterion for selecting the topics was the economic, environmental and human impact, including human rights. The list of topics did not change compared to the previous year. A new element of the analysis is the assessment of the strength of the Bank’s Group’s impact in each topic and ordering them in the order of influence – from the largest to the lowest impact. Three groups of topics were distinguished according to the influence of:

• critical topics that carry the risk of significant violation of customer interests in a way that may threaten future business conduct,
• topics that pose serious risks to the environment, but do not violate the stability of business,
• topics that take into account the impact on stakeholders but are limited to a selected group.

Existing governance policies and principles have been reviewed for each topic, described in detail in section 13.5. It was analysed whether the activities conducted by the Bank and subsidiaries belonging to the Bank’s Group may have a significant negative impact on each of the material topics. Where this possibility was identified, the description of potential impact mechanism of actions taken by the Bank was added.

The study of materiality showed that the Bank and most of the subsidiaries have appropriate policies in all areas encompassed by the Statement, while the risks, which are considered to be key, have already been identified in the risk management process. The Statement contains descriptions of the risks identified in the Bank’s Group to which the principle of “comply or explain” was applied: an explanation was added to information on the lack of full coordination of selected policies at the Group level.