7.5.4. Liquidity risk

Financial liquidity risk means the possibility of losing the capacity to settle, on an ongoing basis, the PZU Group’s liabilities to its clients or business partners. The aim of the liquidity risk management system is to maintain the capacity of fulfilling the entity’s liabilities on an ongoing basis. Liquidity risk is managed separately for the insurance part and the bancassurance part.

The risk identification involves analysis of the possibility of occurrence of unfavorable events, in particular:

• shortage of liquid cash to satisfy current needs;
• lack of liquidity of financial instruments held;
• the structural mismatch between the maturity of assets and liabilities.

Risk assessment and measurement are carried out by estimating the shortage of cash to pay for liabilities. The risk estimate and measurement is carried out from the following perspectives:

• liquidity gaps (static, long-term financial liquidity risk) – by monitoring a mismatch of net cash flows resulting from insurance contracts executed until the balance sheet date and inflows from assets to cover insurance liabilities in each period, based on a projection of cash flows prepared for a given date;
• potential shortage of financial funds (medium-term financial liquidity risk) – through analysis of historical and expected cash flows from the operating activity;
• stress tests (medium-term financial liquidity risk) – by estimating the possibility of selling the portfolio of financial investments in a short period to satisfy liabilities arising from the occurrence of insurable events, including extraordinary ones;
• current statements of estimates (short-term financial liquidity risk) – by monitoring demand for cash reported by business units of a given insurance undertaking in the PZU Group by the date defined in regulations which are in force in that entity.

The banks in the PZU Group employ the liquidity risk management metrics stemming from sector regulations, including Recommendation P issued by the KNF.

To manage the liquidity of the banks in the PZU Group, liquidity ratios are used for different periods ranging from 7 days, to a month, to 12 months and to above 12 months.

Within management of liquidity risk, banks in the PZU Group also perform analyses of the maturity profile over a longer term, depending to a large extent on the adopted assumptions about development of future cash flows connected with items of assets and equity and liabilities. The assumptions take into consideration:

• stability of equity and liabilities with indefinite maturities (e.g. current accounts, cancellations and renewals of deposits, level of their concentration);
• possibility of shortening the maturity period for specific items of assets (e.g. mortgage loans with an early repayment option);
• possibility of selling items of assets (liquidity portfolio).

Monitoring and controlling financial liquidity risk involves analyzing the utilization of the defined limits.

Reporting involves communicating the level of financial liquidity to various decision-making levels. The frequency of each report and the scope of information provided therein are tailored to the information needs at each decision-making level.

The following measures aim to reduce financial liquidity risk:

• maintaining cash in a separate liquidity portfolio at a level consistent with the limits for the portfolio value;
• maintaining sufficient cash in a foreign currency in portfolios of investments earmarked for satisfying insurance liabilities denominated in the given foreign currency;
• provisions of the Agreement on managing portfolios of financial instruments entered into between TFI PZU and PZU regarding limitation of the time for withdrawing cash from the portfolios managed by TFI PZU to at most 3 days after a request for cash is filed;
• keeping open credit facilities in banks and/or the possibility of performing sell-buy-back transactions on treasury securities, including those held until maturity;
• centralization of management of portfolios/funds by TFI PZU;
• limits of liquidity ratios in the banks belonging to the PZU Group.

In connection with the COVID-19 pandemic banks experienced overliquidity in 2020. The pandemic caused a major disruption of the existing simple model involving transfer of funds from bank deposits to finance the economy. In the banks’ balance sheets, the inflow of deposits currently remains undisrupted but the outflow is not routed mainly to finance the economy but to purchase of securities issued and guaranteed by the State Treasury. This results in an increase of debt securities and, consequently, which causes an increase in liquidity, in the banks’ balance sheets. Reduction of the lending activity results from the banks’ restrictive lending policy and, at the same time, clients’ aversion to incurring debt in unpredictable conditions. The banks’ liquidity situation was additionally strengthened by the reduction of the NBP reserve requirement from 3.5% to 0.5% as of the end of April 2020.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the liquidity of the PZU Group’s insurance segment in 2020 should be classified as low. An increase in the number of deaths (mortality rate) was observed, which could result from, among other things, the hindered access to health care and Covid-19 related complications. However this did not significantly impact PZU Group’s liquidity risk. In 2020 there were no grounds to take extraordinary management actions regarding liquidity risk in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic.  As part of routine management actions regarding liquidity risk in 2020, the PZU Group constantly monitored the level of available liquid funds and the utilization of liquidity limits.

The following table presents future undiscounted cash flow from assets and liabilities.