The largest decrease in branches occurred in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, as well as in the Kiev and Kherson regions. The number of ATMs also decreased due to the conflict.
Due to the all-out war with Russia, Ukrainian banks had to close one out of every five branches since February 24, 2022. This is evidenced by the data of the Central Bank.
Most often, bank branches stopped working:
- in the Kharkiv region;
- Donetsk;
- Kherson;
- Kyiv.
The number of ATMs has also decreased. Thus, the NBU fixes a reduction in payment infrastructure (software and hardware complexes of self-service and payment terminals) by 16% – from 33.6 thousand to 28.3 thousand.
The network of POS terminals for 2022 decreased from 439 thousand to 368 thousand. During the year, the number of active payment cards remained unchanged – 46.3 million.
In the fourth quarter, more than two-thirds of bank branches continued to operate despite the bombing of power plants.
energy terrorism
At the end of December 2022, the NBU noted that against the backdrop of the Russian Federation’s missile forces on the Ukrainian energy system, the banking system as a whole remained quite liquid, and liquidity in certain indicators reached a record level. levels.
In addition, banks have developed and been able to implement a set of measures by which they maintain business continuity even in the face of long outages.
The Central Bank emphasized that the system managed to avoid serious problems due to the regular and significant receipt of state payments to the bank accounts of the population.
Recall that at the end of last year, Power Banking, a joint banking network that also includes systemic banks, was launched in Ukraine. The network will work in critical situations, for example during a possible power outage.
Moreover Focus He said that since February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine on a full scale, the profits of Ukrainian banks have decreased by more than five times..
Source: Focus
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