Month: December 2015

One of the largest American banks JP Morgan, on the basis of the results of 2015, has acknowledged PrivatBank as one of the best correspondent-banks for international payment quality and once again conferred the Ukrainian bank with the “Elite Quality Recognition Award”, given to the best banks globally.

According to JP Morgan, PrivatBank has been recognized as one of the best banks for payment performance quality for ten years in a row and once again confirmed its reputation as a financial institution which responds quickly to changes in the requirements of international payment operation registrations.

PrivatBank’s ranking within the «Elite Quality Recognition Award» has constantly increased, equaling 99.74% in 2015, affirming the outstanding level of automation and IT development in payment operations and compliance with international standards for funds transfer operations.

Since 1994, PrivatBank has steadily held the leading position in the banking market for international currency settlements for customers, both by the number of payments and by the quality of processing.

International ratings agency Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services has upgraded PrivatBank’s long- and short-term counterparty credit ratings to ‘B-/C’.

On Monday, 7 December Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services upgraded PrivatBank’s long- and short-term counterparty credit ratings to ‘B-/C’. According to S&P analysts, PrivatBank remains one of the strongest banks in Ukraine despite the current difficult economic conditions.

Unfortunately, some Ukrainian mass media have started to spread the previous “technical” news from S&P of the technical downgrade of ratings (published on Friday, 4 December) by taking it out of context. According to the S&P methodology, PrivatBank’s ratings had to be temporarily downgraded to ‘SD’, which is a mandatory technical procedure for the period of the bank’s negotiations with its creditors on extending Eurobonds’ maturities.

According to the S&P release, the upgrade follows successful completion of PrivatBank’s negotiations with international investors and reflects the bank’s status as the leading commercial bank in Ukraine. As noted in the official report of S&P, PrivatBank’s activity is much more resistant to impact of the current economic and political crises in country than the activities of comparable Ukrainian banks. In S&P analysts’ opinion, PrivatBank is one of the strongest Ukrainian banks, and its business model remains effective even in this difficult financial situation.

According to S&P, PrivatBank has an adequate risk position, reflecting its more conservative risk assumption approach, more sophisticated risk management system, greater diversification of business and higher preparedness for losses which might occur than comparable Ukrainian banks. Considering the above mentioned, S&P analysts expect the asset quality indicators of PrivatBank to remain among the highest in the banking system of the country.

In 2015 PrivatBank (Ukraine) retained its leading position among the largest banks in Central and Eastern Europe and within the top-1000 world banks in the annual ranking published by the British magazine The Banker.

According to The Banker, in 2015 PrivatBank was the only Ukrainian bank among the top-15 bank institutions in the region, holding 13th position among the largest banks in Central and Eastern Europe and 495th position in the Top-1000 world banks ranking.

PrivatBank is the largest Ukrainian bank and the leader of national retail banking. Today PrivatBank serves 13.7 mln accounts of individuals and 619 thousand corporate customers. As at 1 October, 2015 the bank’s assets amounted to UAH 241.809 bln, the bank’s equity was UAH 22.3 bln, and the bank’s net profit for three quarters of 2015 totaled UAH 89.8 mln. The bank’s regional network includes 2,178 branches and outlets, 7,266 ATMs, and 12,263 self-service terminals.

Ukrainians make cashless payments via PrivatBank terminals totaling more than UAH 6 bln monthly. In October 2015, PrivatBank set another national record – the volume of cashless payments for goods and services in its POS-terminal network totaled UAH 6.16 bln. Since the beginning of the year the amount of cashless purchases in the bank’s network has increased by 43%. According to the statistics of the MasterCard company, that ranked Ukraine third in Europe in terms of growth of the number of plastic card transactions.

“Ukraine is quickly catching up with leading European countries by level of cashless payments and is already among the top ten countries of the continent where citizens choose to use cards to pay for goods and services, – says Roman Neginskyi, PrivatBank Deputy Chairman of the Board. The majority of our terminals support payments with contactless cards and we are pleased that this brought Ukraine to the 4th place among all European countries in terms of development of innovative contactless payments”.

PrivatBank is the leader in Ukraine in development of the POS-terminals network. Today, more than 117 thousand terminals operate in Ukrainian retail outlets. Every second store with a PrivatBank POS-terminal provides customers with bonuses of up to 20% for payments by card and every fourth store allows to pay for goods with installments.

More than half of all non-cash payments (52.9%) of Ukrainians are made for purchases at grocery stores and supermarkets, and the average amount of purchases in supermarkets is UAH 98. Ukrainians also actively make cashless payments for clothes and footwear (10.1%), fuel at filling stations (8.1%), electronics and household appliances (7.2%) and medicines in pharmacies (6.9%).