The article addresses the growing importance of operational risk and effective risk management in financial institutions. The authors aim to establish whether or not bank managers are aware of the existence of operational risk and how they manage this kind of risk. The authors conduct a comparative analysis of operational risk and risk management in 10 selected banks in Poland. Data for the analysis comes from the banks’ financial statements for 2013. On the basis of their study, the authors conclude that all the banks were aware of their exposure to operational risk, and they also realized that such risk could not be eliminated completely. Another conclusion is that banks tend to identify operational risk in line with the recommendations of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the primary global standard-setter for the prudential regulation of banks. According to Cichowicz and Nowak, banks are also aware of the urgency of risk management and recognize the need for consistent improvement of process management and monitoring methods. Moreover, banks are aware of the need to regularly update their databases of operational risk events, and they also make efforts to systematically validate their capital requirement models, the authors say.