The reference rate has stood at 3.75% since the 5 March 2026 cut, alongside a deposit rate of 3.25% and a Lombard rate of 4.25%. On 24 July, this desk argued Polish bank equity faced a two-sided squeeze: a CIT and bank-tax burden already running at roughly 80% of 2025's full-year total after six months, converging with an NBP reference rate compressing net interest margins from the other direction. WIG-BANKI's 1.39% gain on 27 July, alongside a 1.38% rise in MWIG40 to 10,006.05, reads as the market leaning toward the view that the margin side of that squeeze is not the binding constraint as of 27 July.
That reading rests on an inference the sector tape cannot confirm on its own. A single-name write-down at Alior of close to PLN 100 million is exactly that: single-name. One wire report frames it as giving investors a sense of the pressure in consumer lending, while larger holders in the index enter from what the same report calls a safer, more diversified position. WIG-BANKI's broad gain the same session shows the index shrugging off Alior's disclosure rather than repricing the sector around it, which is itself informative but not proof that margin pressure has actually lifted.
The RPP member Tyrowicz was on record earlier in July arguing there is no risk of a repeat of the 2022 inflation episode, a framing that leans toward more room to ease rather than less. Set that against the NBP's own March 2026 projection, which already expects CPI to sit above the 3.5% upper band through the end of 2026 following the fuel-cap expiry, with the desk's data noting the coming July projection round is expected to show a materially higher path through mid-2027. A Council member playing down inflation risk and a projection round about to be revised higher are not the same signal, and bank equity on 27 July is trading closer to the former.
Bank stocks are pricing the RPP's reassurance; the CPI print due 30 July is what tests whether the projection round backs it up.
The złoty gives a third, more neutral read. EUR/PLN is trading at 4.324 as of 28 July 2026, up 0.22% on the day but still inside its 20-day range (high 4.3393, low 4.2859), and USD/PLN at 3.802 sits near the top of its own 20-day band. Neither currency pair shows a market repricing Poland's rate path independently of the euro or dollar legs; EUR/USD itself is down 0.17% to 1.1375. FX is not corroborating the bank rally's implicit bet on further easing room, nor is it contradicting it. It is simply quiet, which leaves the CPI flash as the print that will move all three signals in the same direction or expose 27 July's divergence between what bank equity is pricing and what the projection round already assumes.
What would tell the desk it has this wrong is not a level in any one instrument, but the character of the 30 July print itself: a flash reading that lands close to or inside the NBP's March projection path despite the fuel-cap expiry would validate Tyrowicz's framing and the bank-equity rally alike; a print that runs meaningfully hotter, especially alongside early signs the July projection round is being revised up as flagged in the data, would mean the 27 July rally in WIG-BANKI got ahead of a Council still working through a higher inflation path. The desk revisits this the moment the flash lands.
