Emil Radziszewski, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority

Since 12 April 2000, the exchange rate of the Polish zloty (PLN) against foreign currencies has been a floating and unregulated exchange rate. This means that the exchange rate depends on the current market offers of purchase and sale of the Polish currency. Also, there are no regulations that prohibit market participants from setting the PLN exchange rate in any way they wish, however, offers diverging significantly from the market consensus would be quite improbable. Since the market is unregulated and highly liquid, it is very unlikely to have a situation where someone buys currencies at a price that is significantly higher than the lowest price offered on the market or offers to sell the currency at a price lower than the price they could normally obtain. 

No regulations exist either that would govern the rules of communicating information about currency exchange rates, the one exception being a resolution adopted by the Management Board of the National Bank of Poland (Narodowy Bank Polski – NBP)¹ . The process of collecting, processing and publishing this information falls under the freedom to acquire and disseminate information and is not subject to any regulatory restrictions, including public supervision, such as the supervision by the Board of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (PL: Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego). As any other publicly announced information, information about the currency exchange rates can also be incorrect, inaccurate or falsified. Therefore, as in the case of any other information, to have a high degree of assurance as to the accuracy of the foreign exchange rates data, you should verify such information, ideally in independent and trusted sources. One also needs to remember that currency exchange rates may differ depending on the offers or sources they derive from e.g. offer of an online currency exchange service, a bank, the forex market or from the average exchange rates table of the National Bank of Poland.

The National Bank of Poland (NBP) is a credible source to verify the information on foreign currency exchange rates. The NBP conducts foreign exchange policy (established by the Council of Ministers in agreement with the Monetary Policy Council) and announces the current foreign currency exchange rates and other foreign exchange rates. In accordance with the resolution of the NBP Management Board, the National Bank of Poland calculates in particular the current average exchange rates of foreign currencies in Polish zlotys  (PLN). The EUR to PLN exchange rate is calculated as at 11 a.m., based on market exchange rates, while the exchange rates of other currencies (including e.g. USD and CHF) – based on the calculated EUR to PLN rate and EUR market exchange rates to different currencies as at 11 a.m. available on Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg websites. The rates are announced by the NBP on the day of their calculation, including on the NBP website and at the NBP branches.  

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¹Resolution No. 51/2002 of the Management Board of the National Bank of Poland of 23 September 2002 (consolidated text: Official Journal of the NBP 2023/1)