- On 31 May 2017, on the GPW Trading Floor, representatives of the Warsaw Stock Exchange and the Association of Individual Investors have signed a co-operation agreement in support of individual investors.
- The agreement provides for joint initiatives to activate individual investors on the Polish capital market.
On 31 May 2017, Jarosław Grzywiński, acting President of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (GPW) and Jarosław Dominiak, President of the Association of Individual Investors (SII) signed a co-operation agreement between GPW and SSI. The agreement provides for joint initiatives to activate individual investors on the Polish capital market.
The Warsaw Stock Exchange and the Association of Individual Investors have decided to sign the co-operation agreement following a comprehensive review of issues and comments raised by individual investors, daily direct contacts with individual investors, brokers, capital market institutions, as well as the Association’s annual National Investor Survey covering more than 5,000 active individual market participants. The review completed by GPW and SSI identified key issues faced by individual investors, as well as barriers to greater engagement of individual investors on the capital market and improved investment security on the market.
Initiated by GPW and SII, the agreement aims to build a bigger coalition which will contribute to the planned initiatives.
“Individual investors have always been an important group influencing the development of the capital market. GPW has been focusing on individual investors since the beginning. The only thing we missed was a consistent, comprehensive strategy which would precisely define the key challenges and enable specific actions. We expect the initiatives proposed in the agreement we have signed today will address the expectations of individual investors and encourage them to return to the trading floor in Warsaw,” said Jarosław Grzywiński, acting President of the Warsaw Stock Exchange
It is the first written agreement concerning a joint strategy to activate individual investors signed between the Warsaw Stock Exchange and the Association of Individual Investors.
“Over the years, Polish individual investors have played a key role in building the scale and position of the local cash and derivatives markets. While it is still one of the highest across the international markets, the current share of turnover generated by individual investors is hardly adequate to the financial potential of Poles. The Association of Individual Investors has listened to, worked for and represented individual investors for nearly 20 years. We are intimately familiar with their problems and needs. We do believe that focused efforts implementing the initiatives planned together with the Exchange will produce the expected results: restore the confidence of investors in the market, activate existing investors, and spark the interest of new investors on the exchange,” said Jarosław Dominiak, President of the Association of Individual Investors.
The turnover generated by individual investors on the GPW Main Market increased to 13 percent in 2016, reversing the trend which had prevailed in the past years.
Additional activity of individual investors is reflected in the growth in the number of active broker accounts: 36 thousand new accounts were opened in H2 2016 and 5.5 thousand new accounts in H1 2016.
