Development Prospects of the Banking Industry in the New EU Member Countries and Forthcoming Member Countries

Bank consolidation has substantially decreased the number of banks in European banking, which has had important implications for the banking sectors structure in all EU member countries. The consolidation processes have had a tremendous impact on the developments in banking sectors of new EU member countries, where major structural changes have been initiated mostly by new entrant banks from the old EU member countries. The future banking development in new EU member countries will very likely follow some main patterns known from the old EU members. Rather speculative conjectures, which are based on a comparison with banking sectors in other EU member countries indicate, that the total-asset-to-GDP ratio in new member countries should further improve in the future. The banking sector growth will be based mostly on the growth of the credit to non-banking sector, while banks are not expected anymore to use non-bank deposits as a predominant way of funding. Instead potentials for alternative funding possibilities should be activated. Although the non-bank financial intermediaries in new EU members represent a serious competition to banks, their relative underdevelopment prevents them from impacting the developments in banking sectors as known from old EU member countries