The Polish financial and retail consumer market has long been characterized by a high level of competition. Clients increasingly more often benefit from immediate and dynamic choice of product offer available in digital channels. Each of the products offered there must meet the current needs of consumers, but is not always correctly recognized by suppliers. The time from the purchase order to the product receipt is shortened. A consumer will choose the offer that best satisfies their needs with the lowest purchase cost and the safest form of delivery, which is particularly important during the pandemic. Therefore, it is not only the manufacturer but also the distributor of the product that matters. Today, as never before, it is important to match the original purchase need and the financial needs of a consumer. For banks and other financial institutions it means the necessity to constantly increase the advantage over the competition, which does not only include banks but also entities operating on e-commerce platforms. They must develop their technological background and implement innovations and optimization processes. Therefore, they face the challenge of choosing the right direction of their activities and the right solutions.
The construction or expansion of platforms offering financial products requires putting forward a thesis on the validity of the business model assumptions and its testing. Asseco BooX is the first operational technology platform containing a defined set of processes intended for handling financial products, which can be adapted to operate in virtually any market. As a cloud-based subscription platform, BooX is ideal for testing business hypotheses and proving the validity of new models of banks and e-commerce platforms. It is a perfect solution for neobanks, banks under consolidation, test and regulatory sandboxes and marketplace solutions (in e-commerce). Already at the early stage of obtaining a banking license, it enables new initiatives to prove high operational readiness to the national regulator. Entities already present on the market can use its features (subscription, working in a technology sandbox) in the process of testing and launching new services. The transformation or consolidation of banks is a natural application of the BooX platform. The innovation necessary for the development of financial institutions will be ensured by using solutions developed within the Asseco Innovation Hub, e.g. voicebots, built into the platform. Additionally, an organization can take advantage of the services of Asseco Business Consulting, which support business transformation.

The uniqueness of Asseco BooX lies in the fact that it is the first such comprehensive solution developed in Poland. It is a fully mature tool ready to launch and handle banking processes. It is important to remember that in the near future financial services will be increasingly more strongly connected with the natural needs of a client - said Tomasz Blicharz, Asseco BooX Marketer, Asseco Poland.

Asseco BooX is available in a subscription model, but it can also operate traditionally - based on a license purchase. Operationally, it works in the following models: stationary, cloud or hybrid. Both the availability of particular functionalities and the cost incurred by institutions depend on the actual level of their use.
The platform, operating on the basis of this solution, was made available this year in the Cooperative Bank in Lubaczów.
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The development of software for banks is one of the key areas of Asseco's business. The company offers, among others, central banking systems and omni-channel and mobile solutions, responding to the latest trends in global banking. Thanks to its experience and competence, Asseco has implemented its solutions (core banking engine) in over 800 banks. The company is a leading provider of IT solutions for the banking sector in Poland and operates in many European countries, as well as on African and Israeli markets.
For more information on the BooX platform, please see the website: http://boox.asseco.com/

Having in mind the needs of individual investors, Asseco has decided to create an accessible and intuitive solution that will comprehensively support this growing group of clients of brokerage houses. Many years of experience in the development of solutions for the capital market has allowed us to develop a new, fully digital, sales channel for consulting services. PROMAK Mate will be able to offer investment models individually tailored to investors’ needs, support them in creating a real portfolio, and then constantly update it and control the results achieved.

PROMAK Mate represents a new trend in the way consulting services are offered. Its versatility is expressed in the flexibility of building investment portfolios, adjusted to an individual investor's profile and consisting of any type of assets. The possibility of quick implementation in a brokerage office means unprecedented investment comfort for a large group of clients who have operated in this market so far without additional support, said Marcin Zaniewicz, Business Expert and Consultant, Asseco Poland.

The process of investment advice begins with collecting information necessary to create an individual client profile (planned investment period, risk propensity, investment objective). Next, tailored model portfolios are proposed, together with investment efficiency simulations for different scenarios. The next step is to verify the contents of the portfolio, and then maintain it in accordance with the chosen model by systematically submitting recommendations to buy or sell specific financial instruments.
PROMAK Mate is a fully scalable solution of the RWD (Responsive Web Design) class providing comfort of work regardless of the type of tool used (computer, tablet, smartphone). The solution can be easily integrated with existing tools in the area of digitization of investment services, banking systems or AI and machine learning solutions. In combination with the ePROMAK NEXT system developed by Asseco, it provides a unique service in which an investor has access to both automated consulting and investment account management.

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Asseco is a provider of the PROMAK family of solutions dedicated to the financial sector, which effectively support the work of brokerage houses, banks, depositors and investors, both individual and institutional. The company cooperates with nearly half of the Polish brokerage houses and offices present on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE), whose approx. 50% of turnover is accounted for by products from the PROMAK family. In addition, Asseco's solutions support about 650 thousand domestic investment accounts.
PROMAK Mate website

Asseco was ranked 5th in the list of companies with the highest sales results abroad. The company's revenues in this segment amounted to nearly PLN 9.5 billion and accounted for 89% of total sales, which marks a 4% increase versus 2018. In addition, with nearly PLN 13 billion, Asseco was ranked 3rd among the companies with the largest assets abroad. The rankings were prepared by the editors of Rzeczpospolita daily.

The year 2019 was very successful for Asseco - for the first time we generated PLN 10.7 billion in consolidated revenues and PLN 976 million in operating profit. In line with our strategy, we focused on production of our proprietary software and provision of related services. Revenues from this business accounted for 81% of our sales. Foreign markets represented by the Asseco International and Formula Systems segments accounted for 89% of our revenues. This confirms that the Asseco's vision of development, consistently pursued over the years, focused on development of proprietary software and acquisitions of companies engaged in its production, is the right direction to build the strong Asseco Group and a good way to diversify our activity across sectors and geographic regions - said Adam Góral, President of the Management Board of Asseco Poland.

In March, when the pandemic caused the freezing of the economy, the government launched a package of solutions to protect those most affected by the downturn. As a result of the announcement of successive legal acts of the so-called "Anti-Crisis Shields", ZUS had to deal with many new obligations aimed at handling applications concerning, among others, exemption from paying contributions, “waiting time” benefits or the so-called solidarity allowance.
Subsequent acts meant that ZUS had to perform additional duties almost overnight after their publication. Out of the five "Shield" acts and the act on the Polish Tourist Voucher, three had one-day vacatio legis, and the remaining three were in force from the date of publication.
Additional tasks of ZUS related to counteracting COVID-19 were mainly related to handling new applications. For each type of application it was necessary to design, implement and launch appropriate business processes. The scale of the project, limited number of people to handle the documents and critical time constraints meant that the project had to assume the maximum automation of all new processes - summarized Arkadiusz Wójcik in his presentation entitled "The importance of IT for a state during the crisis. Success factors when an IT project becomes a race against time".

By September 15, almost 3 million applications for the "Anti-Crisis Shields" were received, 85% of which were processed fully automatically, without any human intervention, said the Asseco expert. The project carried out in such unusual conditions as the pandemic time could only be successful thanks to the proper organization of work, the effective way of building solutions and the competence and commitment of the people involved in the project - he added.

The successful implementation of the solutions enabled employees and entrepreneurs affected by the lockdown to benefit from the assistance provided by legal acts. In the most difficult period of the pandemic, ZUS fulfilled all additional obligations imposed on it by Covid-19 on time. This was only possible thanks to the use of new technologies and process automation.

The implementation of an IT solution of this scale requires many years of experience of a public entity’s employees in short-term execution of complex projects and a partnership relationship with a stable and trusted contractor which has both competence and execution potential, said the Asseco representative.

Asseco is the largest IT company in Poland and the region of Central and Eastern Europe. For almost 30 years, it has been developing technologically advanced software for companies from key sectors of the economy. It is present in nearly 60 countries and employs about 27,000 people. It develops both organically and through acquisitions - since 2004 it has carried out nearly 90 of them. Asseco companies are listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE), NASDAQ and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. The company is a leading producer of software for the public sector in Poland. It provides solutions for over 350 entities - both central and local government offices. It has built and implemented comprehensive systems for, among others, the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS), the Ministry of the Interior and Administration, the Ministry of National Education and the Agricultural Social Insurance Fund (KRUS). In addition, for many years Asseco has been a trusted partner in the execution of projects in the areas of health care, uniformed services and security as well as power engineering and telecommunications.

The digital revolution in individual areas of life was already well advanced before the outbreak of the pandemic. In Poland, the financial market could boast about a particularly high level of digitization. Additionally, actions taken in the field of public administration allowed to increase the number of citizens using the trusted profile – a public e-identification tool - and the number of available public e-services. The number of trust service providers operating within the legal framework defined by the EU regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market, i.e. the so-called eIDAS, has been systematically increasing throughout Europe. On the other hand, although the electronic circulation of documents characterized the internal organization of a significant part of enterprises, it did not translate into their secure and reliable exchange between individual business entities and was not of a cross-border nature.


In the period from March to September 2020, when the limitations of the COVID-19 pandemic were most severely felt, many companies and public administration units were forced to carry out accelerated digitization processes. The situation not only intensified the pre-existing trend of moving communication or work to a remote formula, but also forced digitization in the area of transactions - declarations of intent, identification or signing of contracts.

In those areas, for some time now, we have had at our disposal European regulations such as eIDAS, introducing tools in the form of trust services and electronic identification. Coronavirus has been verifying on an ongoing basis to what extent they have been fulfilling their function and whether they have been actually used, and to what extent companies or public administration have rather applied ad hoc or substitution solutions. The new post-Covid normality requires that many of the developed technical and legal processes remain with us for a longer period of time, and this will mean that the approach of business and regulators to the use of trust services and eID will have to be revised to make them even more common and useful, said Simina Mut, Partner, CE Legal Leader, Deloitte Legal.  

The need to conduct business in difficult conditions caused that further and deeper digitization of internal processes allowed to combine business objectives with concern for employee safety. Among Polish entrepreneurs, the most changes introduced were to enable remote working - this is how 56% of the respondents to the survey conducted for the report pointed out. The second most common area (51%), within which digitization projects were carried out, were the company's internal processes concerning the circulation of documents and signing contracts on-line. Coronavirus contributed to the acceleration of already implemented activities aimed at digitization of processes in the organization, as well as to the immediate launch of new initiatives, crucial for the current functioning of enterprises.

We are seeing increased interest in digitization in business, and its reception is definitely better than before the outbreak of the pandemic. This is especially true in the financial sector - banks and leasing companies, where remote management and decision making are now heavily explored. Also sectors such as human resources, which previously did not fully see the need for digitization, are now considering how to digitize the processes of signing contracts in order to comply with the rigours of the civil code, said Artur Miękina, Key Projects Sales Director, Asseco Data System.

44% of the respondents indicated that their companies carried out projects related to the digitization of the broadly defined area of human resources management (HR). On the other hand, in the remaining areas, companies have still not decided to implement digital tools, even though the law largely offers this possibility.

The opportunity has not been exploited by utilities and telco companies. Out of the leading Polish energy and gas suppliers, only two allow potential customers to sign the contract remotely. The market of mobile operators is similar. Only in two cases the purchase process can be carried out completely remotely, including signing the contract, but it should be noted that these are not "standard" offers but products aimed at selected market segments. Equally few providers offering Internet access and TV packages enable the electronic conclusion of the contract - said Miłosz Brakoniecki, Partner, Obserwatorium.biz.

Currently, the basic tool to facilitate remote business is electronic signature. There are more than 600,000 qualified certificates active in Poland, which, however, still contrasts with the number of issued payment cards (43 million units, i.e. significantly more than one card per one adult in the country), which are mass products. However, an increase of about 100,000 certificates (17%) on a year-to-year basis should be noted. This means that the "paperless" revolution is still far behind the fast progressing "cashless" revolution in our country.
The most frequently (63%) mentioned document for which an electronic signature is used is the annual financial statement. In turn, 61% of the respondents pointed to financial agreements, such as loan agreements, collateral agreements, investment agreements, etc., as well as employment documentation - including employment contracts, internal documents concerning the company's policy, regulations and employee applications. Only slightly less popular are powers of attorney (54%) and minutes of the board meeting or written resolutions (51%).

I think that over the last six months many organizations have found out that digital tools significantly facilitate remote work and maintain business continuity. Take document workflow, for example, when most employees work remotely. We've seen the growing popularity of digitizing this process and using SimplySign mobile qualified electronic signatures. At the peak of the lockdown, the interest in this tool was 600 percent higher than a year before, said Tomasz Litarowicz, Director of Security and Trust Services, Asseco Data Systems. It is noteworthy that, as our survey shows, the majority of respondents with a qualified electronic signature use it more than 20 times a month, so very often. Therefore, it seems that its holders not only use it to perform public law obligations, which can only be fulfilled electronically, but they have also noticed the potential of a wider application.

One of the main legal aspects of digitization of economic processes has always been the issue of effective conclusion of contracts by electronic means - remotely and without generating the need to send paper documents. However, for such a digital solution to be really successful, it still has to guarantee its legal effectiveness also in the cross-border dimension. In particular, the eIDAS regulation aims at ensuring a common, high standard of qualified electronic signature. The aim of such standardization is first and foremost to ensure that the legal validity of qualified electronic signatures is recognized in all Member States despite being issued in only one Member State.

Unfortunately, the widespread cross-border nature of trust services exists only in theory for the time being. In practice, not only do we encounter psychological resistance to the use of "foreign" e-tools for contracting, but we still face legal and practical barriers to a large extent. The fact that a given document is legally effective in one country does not necessarily mean that it will be enforceable in another country. An interesting trend in this area are platforms for signing electronic documents that integrate e-signature tools from different suppliers. The most widespread of them are present in practically every Member State. Therefore, it is possible that cross-border trust services will follow this way - said Marta Gocał, Managing Associate, Legal Adviser, Deloitte Legal. The experience of recent months shows that Europe needs not only cross-border, but also interoperable solutions for the circulation of electronic documents. The solution here may be eDelivery, which has already proved its worth on some markets and is planned or already implemented on others.

According to the authors of the report, the increase in the popularity of remote client registration in the commercial sector and the trusted profile in public administration in Poland indicates a huge demand for electronic identification services, which can be supplemented by other digital commercial solutions. Electronic identification itself is becoming a key service that should have a clear framework for legal functioning in public administration and the commercial world. Its implementation must be convenient and safe for end customers and include as many online processes as possible. According to the report, not only e-signature, but also electronic delivery and electronic seals have the potential as tools meeting the needs of companies and consumers in the digital transformation. In order to properly implement them, communication and partnership between the commercial sector and regulators at the European and national level is essential.

In 2019, Asseco Poland paid out PLN 250 million in dividends. Thus, it was ranked 3rd in the list of "Poland's largest private dividend companies 2020." The list prepared by the editors of Forbes magazine included two more Asseco Group companies - Asseco Business Solutions and Asseco South Eastern Europe, ranking 9th and 11th, respectively.

The Group's very good financial results in 2019 allowed us to pay a dividend of PLN 250 million, which means PLN 3.01 per share. Asseco has been sharing its profits with shareholders for years and has so far allocated PLN 2.4 billion for this purpose, said Adam Góral, President of Asseco Poland.