The new indicator used to calculate the value of loans, WIRON, is currently at a higher level than the “old” indicator, WIBOR – reports Tuesday’s “Rzeczpospolita”.
“For the first time since the official quotations of the new WIRON reference index started, i.e. at the beginning of this year, its rate turns out to be higher than WIBOR. This is visible primarily in the three-month and six-month rates – reports Tuesday’s “Rzeczpospolita”.
Thus, WIBOR 6M reaches (according to the last available quotations from September 11) 5.77%, and WIRON 6M – 6.03%. The difference to the detriment of WIRON is therefore minus 0.26 percentage points, while at the peak it was even 1.05 percentage points. in favor of WIRON. The same applies to three-month indicators. Currently, WIRON 3M is 0.17 percentage point. higher than WIBOR 3M, and in May this year. was even by 1.07 percentage points. lower.
Change from WIBOR to WIRON
“Rzeczpospolita” reminds that more than a year ago, the Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki talked about the reform of reference indices (i.e. the transition from WIBOR to WIRON), “the new indices looked extremely promising compared to the ‘old’ ones. At one point (in May 2022) WIRON 3M was even 3.5 points lower than WIBOR 3M “. For the construction of the WIBOR indicator, forecasts of bank analysts are mainly used, although transactions are also taken into account, while WIRON is based only on transactions between banks and between banks and companies.
According to the road map published at the end of September last year on the website of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, the withdrawal of products and instruments using WIBOR is to take place in 2024. The entire reform is to be completed in 2025.
At the end of June, ING Bank Śląski was the first bank in Poland to introduce WIRON-based mortgage loans to its offer.
Replacing WIBOR with WIRON may pose a problem not in the case of new loan agreements, but in the scope of existing ones – the National Bank of Poland reported in June in the “Report on the Stability of the Financial System”. He pointed out the need to convert the interest rate in such a way that neither party was privileged.
In turn, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) expects that more banks will introduce mortgage loans based on the WIRON index to their offer.
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