It serves Austrian retail, small business and corporate customers across the country, offering savings, payment, lending, leasing, investment, building society and insurance products and services.

The international activities focus on retail, corporate, commercial real estate and portfolio lending in Western developed countries.

[3][4] BAWAG was founded in 1922 by former Austrian Chancellor Karl Renner to extend favourable terms of credit to ordinary people, as the 'Austrian Worker's Bank'.

In 1963, it took the name of Bank für Arbeit und Wirtschaft AG, BAWAG, or, in English, 'Bank for Labour and Business Corporation'.

The key pillars of the transformation included re-focusing on core geographic markets and products, driving cost efficiency through disciplined cost management and simplified processes and deleveraging the balance sheet to increase capital and liquidity.

As part of BAWAG P.S.K.’s effort to reduce operating expenses, the bank implemented a new cost management approach, rationalized its business model and simplified its organizational structure.

The bank also de-risked the balance sheet, which was achieved predominantly by reducing its exposure to Central and Eastern Europe, exiting proprietary trading, reducing the non-performing loans volume and introducing improved performance management tools.

has also been able to strengthen its capital base due to mainly profit reinvestment that today more than meets the regulatory targets.

Refco has since declared chapter 11 bankruptcy, making BAWAG's collateral essentially worthless.