The financial market comprises various institutions which have a significant impact on a country’s economy and the well-being of its individual citizens. Among the players on the financial market are banks, brokerage houses – referred to in a more general way as investment firms – investment funds, pension funds, insurance companies as well as natural persons (individuals) such as securities brokers and dealers, investment advisors, financial advisors, financial analysts, and insurance brokers and agents. They trade in currencies in physical form (banknotes and coins) or electronic form (bank account entries), credit and loans of various kind and their more complex forms (for example securities - bonds and shares in public companies), and even more complex financial instruments.
The two groups of financial market players mentioned above provide financial services directly or as intermediaries, or act as issuers who offer their own securities on the financial market. These financial services and instruments are used by clients and investors. They make up a third group, without which the market simply cannot exist. This leads us to the conclusion which is the basis for further deliberation: the financial market is a common good of all its participants and can develop in a truly stable and secure way only when all the participants are aware of this relationship.
A special obligation rests on financial institutions, as they deal in their clients’ assets and should try to make sure that the clients can trust them. Legislators, who adopt legal provisions, and organisations established to supervise the market, like for example the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, try to ensure security on the financial market. But this is also done by market players themselves through self-regulation mechanisms, including different codes of conduct they adopt and enforce. Practice shows that in many cases this self-regulation factor plays a much greater role in the process of building trust than any legal provision. The awareness of this role is growing among market participants and regulators. This is reflected in the fact that European Union directives make increasingly strong references to the voluntarily adopted principles of corporate governance and codes of conduct.
The awareness of the importance of such voluntarily adopted rules of conduct is also growing on the Polish financial market. Companies listed on the stock exchange have their corporate governance principles. And many financial institutions have their codes of conduct. At the end of last year there emerged an initiative to review the existing codes and formulate some universal rules which could be adopted by all financial institutions and which could serve as a pattern and inspiration for improving codes applied in individual segments of the market. As many as 28 institutions and organisations representing the interests of financial market participants or clients showed their interest in the initiative and the Polish Financial Supervision Authority provided organisational assistance to it by offering a platform for cooperation and a dedicated website. Representatives of the academic community – professors regarded as authorities on the financial market and business ethics – were also invited to work on the project.
The product of their intensive work is a draft Canon of Good Practices on the Financial Market, with 16 universal rules of conduct which are to bind players on the market. The participants in the project have also prepared a draft agreement to define principles of cooperation in applying and improving these rules. There is every indication that the draft will be finally adopted in late 2007 or early 2008 and then we will advance to another stage of development: a market based to a much larger extent on self-regulation and a sense of mutual responsibility for its stable development and security.

Opinions presented in the text are those of the author and do not express the official standpoint of the PFSA and its office.