Moody’s Baltic Banking and Covered Bonds Briefing
Explore recent developments in the banking sector, its funding patterns and implications for credit risk
In-PERSON EVENT | Riga, Latvia | Radisson Blu Latvija Conference & Spa Hotel
Registration is now closed
Agenda
13:30
EET
Registration and Networking
14:05
EET
14:45
EET
Baltics credit profile strengthening as the banking market matures, though risks remain
- Asset risks are stabilizing, with moderating growth and low levels of non-performing loans, funding diversity is improving
- Balanced against uncertain tax regime and regional geopolitical tensions
- Comparing Baltics versus other EU markets
15:15
EET
15:45
EET
16:30
- 17:30
EET
Drinks Reception
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Piotr Janczak serves as the Moody’s Ratings' Country Manager, Poland. Based in Warsaw, he leads the rating agency’s operations in Poland and and coordinates the commercial activities of Moody’s across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Mr. Janczak graduated from the Foreign Trade Faculty of the Warsaw School of Economics. He has more than 25 years’ experience in equity as well as debt capital markets and loans across CEE. He joined Moody’s Investors Service in 2015 from Erste Group Bank AG, where he had been a director at the Merchant Banking division, based in Prague and covering CEE. Prior to that, Mr. Janczak served as a Director of Capital Markets at Deutsche Bank group in Warsaw.
Simon Ainsworth, who is based in London, is an Associate Managing Director responsible for the analytical teams maintaining ratings on Nordic and Baltic banks and on a range of European insurance companies.
Simon previously served as a Group Credit Officer. In that role he carried responsibility for monitoring ratings quality as well as assisting in the development and implementation of rating methodologies and practices applied to rated financial institutions within the EMEA region.
Simon joined Moody’s in March 2014 following sixteen years at the Bank of England.
At the Bank, he worked in a variety of roles primarily in its financial markets and banking operation divisions; as well as working on a variety of financial risk and crisis related issues. This included the resolution of failed banks, as well as responsibility for the risk management framework applied to collateral accepted in the Bank’s sterling market operations.Simon graduated from the University of Durham in 1998, having studied Economics and Politics. He is based in London.
Mārtiņš Bitāns has a Master's Degree in International Economics from the University of South Denmark, Odense.
Mārtiņš Bitāns started his career at Latvijas Banka in 1998 as an economist of the Monetary Policy Department, later becoming a senior economist and Head of the Monetary Research and Forecasting Division. He has mostly researched the issues of international competitiveness and sustainable development and is the author of several publications of Latvijas Banka on the above.
In 2007–2009, Mārtiņš Bitāns worked for the International Monetary Fund as Adviser to the Executive Director of the Nordic-Baltic Constituency of the IMF.
Mārtiņš Bitāns is the representative of Latvijas Banka in the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB).
Tom Ogden, based in Stockholm, is a lead analyst responsible for a number of financial institutions in the Nordics and Baltics, and was previously a member of the analytical team covering financial institutions, and regional and local governments in Australia and New Zealand.
Prior to joining Moody’s, Tom held roles at the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and Macquarie Group. Tom holds bachelor’s degrees in Commerce and Arts from University of Sydney, Australia
Stanislav rejoined Moody’s in November 2012 and has since been working in EMEA structured finance group. Since 2019 he is in covered bond team responsible for covered bond programmes in Germany, Austria and CEE markets.
Prior to joining covered bond team, he was responsible for analyzing and rating RMBS and ABS transactions with focus on CIS and Dutch RMBS markets. Stanislav had already been on Moody’s Frankfurt RMBS team from February 2007 to September 2010.
Earlier in his career, from 2004 to 2007, Stanislav worked as Audit Senior at KPMG in Frankfurt. From October 2010 to October 2012, he worked as Business Advisor at BearingPoint GmbH, in the department Banking Operations and Applications.
Stanislav holds BSc degree in business administration from the Siberian State Aerospace University (Russia), Master degree in international economic relations and PhD in political economy from the University of Konstanz (Germany). He is trilingual, fluently speaking English, German and Russian.
| Alexander Zeidler is a Vice President - Senior Credit Officer at Moody’s in London. He coordinates Moody’s efforts in the Nordic covered bond markets Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and in the Baltic countries. Furthermore, he is responsible for a portfolio of covered bond programmes in Norway and Switzerland and was previously leading the analysis of the covered bond markets in Austria and Luxembourg. As a senior member of the analytical team, Alexander has coordinated and contributed to a number of publications and regularly speaks at investor and industry conferences. Prior to joining Moody’s EMEA Covered Bonds team in 2010, Alexander was responsible for a portfolio of CMBS transactions in the UK, France, the Netherlands and Germany for four years. Alexander started his career in commercial real estate finance, working for overten years as an underwriter, credit auditor and corporate analyst at UniCredit in Germany. Alexander also holds a MBA from a Fulbright program sponsored by the U.S. government at the University of Louisville, U.S.A. Moody’s has a leading global covered bond franchise, rating some US$2 trillion worth of covered bonds securities, which represents more than 80% of all public bonds issued globally in the sector. In total, over 20 senior analysts cover more than 200 covered bond programmes in over 30 countries globally. Moody’s EMEA Covered Bonds team is located in London, Madrid, Frankfurt and Paris. |
Rada Tomova is an Associate Director in the EBRD’s Capital and Financial Markets Development (CFMD) team, where she is the Head of the Regional Policy Partnerships group. Graduating with distinction (First Class Honours) from the London School of Economics in 2004, Rada started her career at Deutsche Bank in London, where she worked in debt capital and derivatives markets focusing on Central and Eastern Europe during 2004-2011. She has extensive experience in implementing macro-financial assistance programmes, financial sector regulation and macro-prudential policy, having worked at the European Commission’s DG ECFIN and DG FISMA in Brussels for 7 years since September 2011.
Rada joined the EBRD in October 2018 and has worked on projects in both debt and equity capital markets, as well as capital markets infrastructure, in multiple countries across the Bank’s regions. Her areas of expertise include debt capital markets, financial markets diagnostics and regulation, macro-prudential frameworks, market infrastructure reforms, the alignment of prudential and supervisory frameworks for banks and central clearing counterparties with EU standards and related equivalence assessments, and covered bonds reform. At EBRD, Rada has also worked extensively with Banking teams on developing capital markets investment projects and on transition impact assessments of capital markets transactions. Since June 2022, Rada has led the Regional Policy Partnerships team within CFMD which is responsible for market diagnostics and policy prioritisation and delivery in capital and financial markets in all the EBRD’s countries of operations.
Since 2015, Ainars Balcers has served on the Lending Committee at the Finance Latvia Association, where he leverages his extensive experience in the private lending sector to provide expert guidance. Currently, he also holds the position of Co-Chair of the Lending Committee. The Finance Latvia Association advocates for the financial sector’s interests at both national and international levels, ensuring that cross-sectoral issues are effectively addressed.
Ainars also have experience as the Head of Mortgage Lending Support at Swedbank Baltics, where he was responsible for mortgage business support and underwriting standards across Swedbank’s operations in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia for the past decade. His role included relationships management with real estate partners and mortgage competence support coordination for the frontline teams across all three Baltic countries.
With over two decades of experience in private lending, Ainars has developed a deep expertise in mortgage customer service, product development, and overdue management, particularly during the post-financial crisis period in Latvia.
Swedbank is the largest bank in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, serving approximately 3.3 million private customers and 282,000 corporate customers. Swedbank Baltics AS, a financial holding company fully owned by Swedbank AB (publ) in Sweden, oversees Swedbank’s subsidiary banks in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, forming a Baltic sub-consolidation group under the supervision of the European Central Bank.
Richard Kemmish is an independent covered bond consultant which is a deliberately vague description of various bits and pieces mainly covered bond or occasionally securitisation related. This often involves working with multilateral development banks to help countries introduce new legal frameworks and develop their markets. In addition, he undertakes consultancy work - clients have included private sector banks, the European Commission and the EBRD - and regularly works with Invisso Conferences (formerly known as Euromoney conferences) as an editorial consultant and the ECBC. He is also available as an expert witness and for covered bond training. He has worked in the covered bond market for over 20 years.
Edoardo Calandro is a member of Moody’s EMEA Banking Team based in London, with lead responsibilities for a portfolio of banks headquartered in the UK.
Since joining Moody’s in 2008, Edoardo worked on banks’ ratings and research; prior to his current focus on UK banks, he held lead responsibilities for Italian and Turkish bank ratings.
Edoardo holds a bachelor’s degree in management and a master’s degree in finance and accounting from Bocconi University in Milan.
Mārtiņš Bitāns has a Master's Degree in International Economics from the University of South Denmark, Odense.
Mārtiņš Bitāns started his career at Latvijas Banka in 1998 as an economist of the Monetary Policy Department, later becoming a senior economist and Head of the Monetary Research and Forecasting Division. He has mostly researched the issues of international competitiveness and sustainable development and is the author of several publications of Latvijas Banka on the above.
In 2007–2009, Mārtiņš Bitāns worked for the International Monetary Fund as Adviser to the Executive Director of the Nordic-Baltic Constituency of the IMF.
Mārtiņš Bitāns is the representative of Latvijas Banka in the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB).
Rada Tomova is an Associate Director in the EBRD’s Capital and Financial Markets Development (CFMD) team, where she is the Head of the Regional Policy Partnerships group. Graduating with distinction (First Class Honours) from the London School of Economics in 2004, Rada started her career at Deutsche Bank in London, where she worked in debt capital and derivatives markets focusing on Central and Eastern Europe during 2004-2011. She has extensive experience in implementing macro-financial assistance programmes, financial sector regulation and macro-prudential policy, having worked at the European Commission’s DG ECFIN and DG FISMA in Brussels for 7 years since September 2011.
Rada joined the EBRD in October 2018 and has worked on projects in both debt and equity capital markets, as well as capital markets infrastructure, in multiple countries across the Bank’s regions. Her areas of expertise include debt capital markets, financial markets diagnostics and regulation, macro-prudential frameworks, market infrastructure reforms, the alignment of prudential and supervisory frameworks for banks and central clearing counterparties with EU standards and related equivalence assessments, and covered bonds reform. At EBRD, Rada has also worked extensively with Banking teams on developing capital markets investment projects and on transition impact assessments of capital markets transactions. Since June 2022, Rada has led the Regional Policy Partnerships team within CFMD which is responsible for market diagnostics and policy prioritisation and delivery in capital and financial markets in all the EBRD’s countries of operations.
Richard Kemmish is an independent covered bond consultant which is a deliberately vague description of various bits and pieces mainly covered bond or occasionally securitisation related. This often involves working with multilateral development banks to help countries introduce new legal frameworks and develop their markets. In addition, he undertakes consultancy work - clients have included private sector banks, the European Commission and the EBRD - and regularly works with Invisso Conferences (formerly known as Euromoney conferences) as an editorial consultant and the ECBC. He is also available as an expert witness and for covered bond training. He has worked in the covered bond market for over 20 years.
Since 2015, Ainars Balcers has served on the Lending Committee at the Finance Latvia Association, where he leverages his extensive experience in the private lending sector to provide expert guidance. Currently, he also holds the position of Co-Chair of the Lending Committee. The Finance Latvia Association advocates for the financial sector’s interests at both national and international levels, ensuring that cross-sectoral issues are effectively addressed.
Ainars also have experience as the Head of Mortgage Lending Support at Swedbank Baltics, where he was responsible for mortgage business support and underwriting standards across Swedbank’s operations in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia for the past decade. His role included relationships management with real estate partners and mortgage competence support coordination for the frontline teams across all three Baltic countries.
With over two decades of experience in private lending, Ainars has developed a deep expertise in mortgage customer service, product development, and overdue management, particularly during the post-financial crisis period in Latvia.
Swedbank is the largest bank in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, serving approximately 3.3 million private customers and 282,000 corporate customers. Swedbank Baltics AS, a financial holding company fully owned by Swedbank AB (publ) in Sweden, oversees Swedbank’s subsidiary banks in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, forming a Baltic sub-consolidation group under the supervision of the European Central Bank.
Piotr Janczak serves as the Moody’s Ratings' Country Manager, Poland. Based in Warsaw, he leads the rating agency’s operations in Poland and and coordinates the commercial activities of Moody’s across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Mr. Janczak graduated from the Foreign Trade Faculty of the Warsaw School of Economics. He has more than 25 years’ experience in equity as well as debt capital markets and loans across CEE. He joined Moody’s Investors Service in 2015 from Erste Group Bank AG, where he had been a director at the Merchant Banking division, based in Prague and covering CEE. Prior to that, Mr. Janczak served as a Director of Capital Markets at Deutsche Bank group in Warsaw.
Simon Ainsworth, who is based in London, is an Associate Managing Director responsible for the analytical teams maintaining ratings on Nordic and Baltic banks and on a range of European insurance companies.
Simon previously served as a Group Credit Officer. In that role he carried responsibility for monitoring ratings quality as well as assisting in the development and implementation of rating methodologies and practices applied to rated financial institutions within the EMEA region.
Simon joined Moody’s in March 2014 following sixteen years at the Bank of England.
At the Bank, he worked in a variety of roles primarily in its financial markets and banking operation divisions; as well as working on a variety of financial risk and crisis related issues. This included the resolution of failed banks, as well as responsibility for the risk management framework applied to collateral accepted in the Bank’s sterling market operations.Simon graduated from the University of Durham in 1998, having studied Economics and Politics. He is based in London.
Tom Ogden, based in Stockholm, is a lead analyst responsible for a number of financial institutions in the Nordics and Baltics, and was previously a member of the analytical team covering financial institutions, and regional and local governments in Australia and New Zealand.
Prior to joining Moody’s, Tom held roles at the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and Macquarie Group. Tom holds bachelor’s degrees in Commerce and Arts from University of Sydney, Australia
Stanislav rejoined Moody’s in November 2012 and has since been working in EMEA structured finance group. Since 2019 he is in covered bond team responsible for covered bond programmes in Germany, Austria and CEE markets.
Prior to joining covered bond team, he was responsible for analyzing and rating RMBS and ABS transactions with focus on CIS and Dutch RMBS markets. Stanislav had already been on Moody’s Frankfurt RMBS team from February 2007 to September 2010.
Earlier in his career, from 2004 to 2007, Stanislav worked as Audit Senior at KPMG in Frankfurt. From October 2010 to October 2012, he worked as Business Advisor at BearingPoint GmbH, in the department Banking Operations and Applications.
Stanislav holds BSc degree in business administration from the Siberian State Aerospace University (Russia), Master degree in international economic relations and PhD in political economy from the University of Konstanz (Germany). He is trilingual, fluently speaking English, German and Russian.
| Alexander Zeidler is a Vice President - Senior Credit Officer at Moody’s in London. He coordinates Moody’s efforts in the Nordic covered bond markets Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and in the Baltic countries. Furthermore, he is responsible for a portfolio of covered bond programmes in Norway and Switzerland and was previously leading the analysis of the covered bond markets in Austria and Luxembourg. As a senior member of the analytical team, Alexander has coordinated and contributed to a number of publications and regularly speaks at investor and industry conferences. Prior to joining Moody’s EMEA Covered Bonds team in 2010, Alexander was responsible for a portfolio of CMBS transactions in the UK, France, the Netherlands and Germany for four years. Alexander started his career in commercial real estate finance, working for overten years as an underwriter, credit auditor and corporate analyst at UniCredit in Germany. Alexander also holds a MBA from a Fulbright program sponsored by the U.S. government at the University of Louisville, U.S.A. Moody’s has a leading global covered bond franchise, rating some US$2 trillion worth of covered bonds securities, which represents more than 80% of all public bonds issued globally in the sector. In total, over 20 senior analysts cover more than 200 covered bond programmes in over 30 countries globally. Moody’s EMEA Covered Bonds team is located in London, Madrid, Frankfurt and Paris. |
Edoardo Calandro is a member of Moody’s EMEA Banking Team based in London, with lead responsibilities for a portfolio of banks headquartered in the UK.
Since joining Moody’s in 2008, Edoardo worked on banks’ ratings and research; prior to his current focus on UK banks, he held lead responsibilities for Italian and Turkish bank ratings.
Edoardo holds a bachelor’s degree in management and a master’s degree in finance and accounting from Bocconi University in Milan.