The 70s and 80s were a period when dealers in Poland were few and it can easily be stated that they were the “fair-haired”, elite among the bankers. In our country, they were few representatives of the profession which was held in high esteem all over the world. It was a great ennoblement to join this group. And it was not only about the possibility to travel frequently on business abroad, avail of internships in high-profile banks and big financial centers. Markets where the dealers operated required vast knowledge of them, professionalism and something that is referred to as professional ethics, integrity or simple congeniality.

And indeed it is congeniality that has become one of the main reasons for which the dealers’ community started to look for some form of integration. The result of that was the foundation of the International Financial Markets Association (ACI) seated in Paris.

In Poland, the domestic banking system started to develop only after 1990. It was manifested in springing up new banks and dealing rooms with their staff. The process covered the whole of the country while banks opened their head offices in the majority of large cities. The notion of “merger” was to emerge only a few years later while the process of migrating treasury operations to Warsaw had not been initiated yet. As a result of this fragmentation dealers wanted to meet one another and talk about their work. Warsaw’s Reuter’s office played an important role back then. New technologies themselves naturally stimulated integration by giving access to information and offering the possibility to maintain contacts. It was all coupled with regular meetings (events) organized by Reuter.

Banks appreciated the role of mutual relationships as well. So they started to organize meetings of the dealers from all over the country themselves. Many a person must remember informal back then “forexes” in Zakopane and Gdańsk. In those days and during those meetings, an idea was starting to see the daylight to establish an organization which would integrate the community not only by focusing on social matters. As assumed by the authors of the initiative, the organization was to:

- implement and promote Markets standards,

- propagate dealer’s ethics,

- develop educational programs,

- co-decide on the shape and principles underlying the operation of the domestic Markets.

These were the objectives adopted by Polish Financial Markets Association – Forex Polska, established in 1992. In 1994, the Association was affiliated with ACI The Financial Markets Organization – a dealers’ organization with global reach, seated in Paris. In March 2004, the AGM of Forex Polska renamed it to Polish Financial Markets Association ACI Polska.