The investment policy is a set of rules for investing funds at the disposal of IRGiT. The priority objective of the investment policy is to ensure the investment security standard through:
- selection of appropriate low-risk financial instruments,
- diversification of the investment portfolio,
- limiting the selection of counterparties to those characterized by low credit risk.
IRGiT also cares about ensuring the liquidity of the invested funds, while maximizing the potential return on investment.
The funds to be invested include payments made by the House Members to the settlement guarantee system for contributions to the Guarantee Funds and IRGiT’s own funds.
Requirements for counterparties
IRGiT concludes investment transactions only with institutions whose risk level is acceptable to the Clearing House. The risk level is assessed on the basis of external and internal credit risk analysis. The external analysis is based on the assessments of recognized and approved by ESMA rating agencies: Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's. Only banks with a stable rating, acceptable by IRGiT, ensuring the highest level of security of invested funds are allowed. In the case of different ratings assigned by agencies, the rating with the lowest value is taken into account.
The internal analysis is based on an assessment of the bank's economic condition, including the identification of potential risk based on quantitative indicators. When assessing the risk level, IRGIT evaluates the level of capital requirements, liquidity, quality of assets and the bank's profit level in the context of risk.
Investing rules
Assets contributed by the House Members and own funds are kept by IRGiT in the form of bank deposits. IRGiT may also invest funds in repo or buy-sell-back transactions, secured with debt instruments issued by the National Bank of Poland or the State Treasury and denominated in PLN, provided that their maturity does not exceed 2 years. All investments are made in PLN (which is the currency of settlements and collateral at IRGiT) due to the intention to eliminate the currency risk.
To ensure the safety of funds, IRGiT aims to diversify the investment portfolio in relation to counterparties. The concentration limit at the level of a single bank is 30%, which means that a maximum of 30% of the assets accumulated in the Guarantee Fund can be kept at a given time in one bank. This limit does not apply to funds deposited with the National Bank of Poland and Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego.
Each change in the principles of investing funds described in the content of the IRGiT Investment Policy is subject to approval by the IRGiT’s Management Board. The implementation of the Investment Policy requires the approval of the Investment Committee each time in the form of an investment protocol, which collects data on the invested funds and the conditions on which they are invested.