Statutory regulations and corporate governance standards in cooperative banks

Eleven years after the last financial crisis, many banks are still working out their organisational backlogs and severe financial losses. Apart from the expansionary monetary policy and faulty financial inno- vations, the lack of proper supervision of the financial sector is considered one of the main sources of the global economic crisis. The expectations of shareholders led banks to take more courageous risks, more leverage and more speculation. Ownership supervision failed as a result, as virtually no bank was prepared for the imminent catastrophe. To prevent a similar scenario in the future, reforms in the financial sector were considered necessary, and above all the strengthening of corporate governance was considered necessary. Although the co-operative banks operating in Poland are small entities with a local character, they have also to some extent been affected by the global crisis. This has been delayed, and on a somewhat smaller scale, but has worsened the performance of many banks. Given numerous proposals for additional corporate governance regulations, in addition to the existing national laws and codes of good practice, regulations were implemented at the European level, and the national supervisor, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, introduced additional guidelines - corporate governance rules.