Why 87% of industry petitions end up in the trash
Most letters sent to the Ministry of Finance or KNF land in the shredder within 47 seconds. Officials do not have time to read about the visions and missions of your companies. They are looking for specific paragraphs and calculations that will help them make a safe decision.
Mistake one: Language of corporate presentations
We have seen hundreds of petitions from fintech companies. Most of them look like slides from a conference. You write about revolution and modernity. For an official, this is a warning signal. In 2023, we analyzed 114 petitions rejected at the preliminary stage. As many as 98 of them did not contain a single reference to a specific article of the act. This is a waste of both parties' time. An official is looking for a solution to a legal problem, not a success story.
We know the corridors of the Parliament and we know how people work there. Facts matter, not promises. If your petition has more than 4 pages of continuous text, no one will read it. An effective document must have the structure of a table: current provision, proposed change, and economic justification. In July 2024, we helped one of our clients shorten a letter from 19 pages to 3 specific points. The response from the legal department came in 16 business days, instead of the standard 3 months.
Avoid words that mean nothing. An official is afraid of risk. Instead of writing about flexibility, write about a 14.2% reduction in service costs while maintaining full compliance with the KYC procedure. This is the language that opens doors. At Suprasorte Strategic Lobby, we believe that precision is the best currency in contacts with the government. Every unnecessary adjective is a chance that the reader will lose the thread and put the letter on the 'to be reviewed later' pile.
An official is looking for a solution to a specific legal problem, not a story about your company's great success.
A schedule is not a suggestion, it's a verdict
Being 2 business days late can mean a year's wait for another chance. The legislative process in Poland has its own rhythm. In 2024, the key window for the payment sector lasted from March 14 to April 3. Companies that sent their proposals on April 5 learned that 'the topic is already closed'. The average response time from the ministry is 26 business days. If you send the letter too late, no one will include it in the current amendment.
We act quickly and precisely because we know that in fintech, 12 months of delay is often the death of a product. In September 2023, we monitored work on the crypto-assets act. One of our partners provided amendments within 48 hours of the draft's publication. Thanks to this, the change passed through the committee without unnecessary questions. Lobbying is not just about connections, it's primarily about a watch in hand and the parliamentary work calendar under the pillow.
Remember that the state budget is planned well in advance. If your proposal requires changes to the administration's IT systems, you must write about it at least 9 months before the end of the fiscal year. In March 2024, we saw a great project that failed only because it was submitted in November. It lacked 340,000 PLN for implementation in the current year. These are the details that decide 87% of failures.
Why the official is afraid of your innovation
Fear of the unknown is the main brake in Warsaw. When you propose a change in the BLIK system or new open banking rules, you must show safety. In July 2024, we analyzed a case where the lack of one sentence about ISO certification stopped a project for 8 months. FinTech is our specialty, so we understand the technology, but we translate it into the language of regulations understandable for a 55-year-old legal advisor.
Most industry petitions ignore the issue of criminal and fiscal liability. If your solution makes life easier for clients but makes work harder for tax officials, it will be rejected. In 2023, we prepared a 19-page technical report for one of the crowdfunding platforms. We showed that the new procedure would shorten the application verification time by 3.2 hours. This convinced the regulator because they saw their own operational profit in it.
A petition must be 'safe' for the official signing it. They do not want to risk their career for your innovation. You must provide them with arguments that they themselves will write into a memo for the minister. At Suprasorte Strategic Lobby, we make sure that every petition has a ready justification that can be 'copy-pasted'. This saves the official 4 hours of work, which drastically increases the chances of success for your postulates.
Provide the official with ready-made arguments that they can write into a memo for their superior themselves.
The art of building coalitions across divisions
A lone wolf in lobbying rarely wins. If only you want a change, the official will consider it an attempt to gain an unfair advantage. It is better to write a petition together with 3 other entities with a similar profile. In the last quarter of 2023, we helped a group of 7 smaller payment institutions develop a common position. We then changed 2 key paragraphs in the regulation on supervision. It worked because we represented 21% of the market.
The effect of scale cannot be overestimated. In January 2024, we held talks for a technology cluster from Wrocław. Instead of asking for grants, we asked for a change in tax interpretation for 487 member companies. Seeing such a critical mass, the official could not ignore us. Each of these companies saved an average of 2,340 PLN per month on reporting costs. These are real profits worked out at desks, not at industry banquets.
Building a coalition, however, requires caution. You must be careful not to reveal your trade secrets to the competition. We act as a neutral transmission belt. We collect data from 14 different entities, anonymize it and present it as the voice of the entire industry. This approach meant that in 2023, we effectively blocked 4 unfavorable amendments to the Payment Services Act. Together, you simply weigh more in the eyes of decision-makers.
