* Bank Pekao details contribution after SK Bank collapse
* Lobby group urges government to hold off on new levies
* Guarantee fund tempers demand for 2016 (Adds call for restraint on bank levy)
WARSAW, Nov 25 Poland's banks urged the government to rein in a planned new levy on the industry after Pekao SA, the country's second largest lender, joined a growing list of those forced to help cover the cost of the failure of SK Bank.
Poland's financial regulator submitted a bankruptcy filing on Monday for SK Bank, which has about 3.5 billion zlotys of assets. Under Polish law, other banks have to cover the liabilities of failed peers.
Pekao, the Polish unit of Italy's UniCredit, said it would have to contibute 234 million zlotys ($58 million) and that the fee would hit its results in the fourth quarter of this year. Others will be similarly affected.
According to local brokerage DM BZ WBK, Poland's banks could face a bill of 2.1 billion zlotys stemming from the failure of SK Bank.
The head of the country's national banking association, the ZBP, called on the country's new government to show restraint in implementing any further levies on the sector.
The conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), which has an outright majority in parliament after an election in October, plans to raise about 5 billion zlotys from a new tax on bank assets and burden banks with at least part of the cost of conversion of Swiss franc mortgages into zlotys.
"This is another burden over the last dozen or so months, a very high one," head of the ZBP, Krzysztof Pietraszkiewicz, told Reuters, referring to the effects of the SK Bank failure.
"One needs restraint in all this proposing any new levies, because this (.) very negatively affects banks' ability to finance economic development," he added.
The Bank Guarantee Fund (BFG) has sent lenders a letter demanding payments, and banks will pay the money this week, with totals depending on their market size.
There was some better news for lenders when the BFG set the total fee they will have to pay next year at a lower than expected level.
"It's a positive surprise that these fees were not hiked year-on-year (too much). This cost rise is bearable for banks," said Michal Konarski, an analyst with mBank brokerage said.
He added that the cumulated fee will amount to 2.5 billion zlotys next year, up from 2.2 billion zlotys in 2015. It is calculated as a percentage of banks' risk-weighted assets and these are still on the rise.
The market consensus has assumed the aggregated fee to rise to 3.2 billion in 2016. ($1 = 3.9943 zlotys) ($1 = 4.0240 zlotys) (Reporting by Jakub Iglewski, Marcin Goettig, Marcin Goclowski and Agnieszka Barteczko; Editing by Keith Weir)
.