In recent years, there has been an unprecedented expansion of banks' range of products aimed at individual customers. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable at Polish banks, whose range of products was very limited just a dozen or so years ago.

Despite the tendency to broaden the range of products on offer, a continual extension of the portfolio is advantageous neither to the bank nor its customers. Maintaining a very broad range of products is very expensive for the bank and complicates the management of the product portfolio and the associated risk, at the same time not guaranteeing better satisfaction of the needs of potential purchasers. On the other hand, the customer - who on the whole only rarely notice differences between products belonging to the same group Ź- may find themselves lost in a very broad range of services and may increasingly become convinced that "all banks have the same on offer".

Therefore a balanced approach to complementing the range on offer with new products has a great importance for the efficiency of the bank's marketing activity and for ensuring its profitability, while striving to raise customer satisfaction. Thus the purpose of this article is to identify the grounds for broadening the range of products, the risk associated with this process and the factors conditioning the market success of the innovation.

From the marketing point of view, new products should be first and foremost a response to the customers' needs and expectations. On the other hand, the key non-marketing factor in the development of the range of products on offer is technological progress, which facilitates the creation of entirely new products.

The introduction of new products to the banking services market is a high-risk enterprise, e.g. due to the intangibility of the product, high costs linked to the deployment of new technologies and intensifying market competition.

There are many factors, which can mitigate this risk. However, apart from having a distinguishing product, characterised by a high standard of quality which is a novelty on the market and which is aligned with the bank's current offer and targeted at a precisely defined customer segment, a well-prepared and efficiently implemented launch of the new service is key to market success of the innovation. Early stages of product development, in which customers and front staff with first client contact should be involved, the stage of product testing in test markets, which makes it possible to withdraw the product if its market success is in doubt, and the product commercialisation stage play a special role here. The alignment of the innovation with the organisational structure of the bank and strategic support from the management for its launch have great importantance in its market success.