Privatbank

Founded in 1992, PrivatBank Commercial Bank is the leader of the country's banking market and the largest bank with domestic capital in Ukraine.

History

2023: Igor Kolomoisky arrested in the case of illegal withdrawal of $13.5 million

In early September 2023, the Shevchenkovsky District Court of Kyiv arrested the founder of PrivatBank Igor Kolomoisky for two months in the case of the illegal withdrawal of $13.5 million. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) suspects him of fraud and legalization of property obtained by criminal means. Read more here.

2022: Fine of 800 thousand euros in Latvia for violation of Latvian anti-money laundering legislation

In April 2022, the Latvian daughter of the Ukrainian Privat Bank, Privat Bank, was fined 800 thousand euros for violating Latvian anti-money laundering legislation and violating "sanctions" regimes.

The bank does not comply well enough with the requirements for checking customers for the risks of money laundering and international sanctions, the country's authorities say.

2021:770 IT job cuts

In November 2021, it became known about the decision of PrivatBank to significantly reduce jobs in IT divisions. It was adopted at a meeting of the supervisory board of a Ukrainian credit institution dated October 28, 2021, according to the Telegram channel of the joint representative body of Privatbank trade unions, ProfPrivat.

In total, 771 positions are reduced. According to the decision, the position of director of information technology is also being liquidated.

At the same time, the document states that new jobs will be created for employees from these departments. Later, the bank's press center confirmed that they were not going to fire IT specialists.

As for the staff of IT divisions, it will remain unchanged until the end of 2021, and then it will only expand, "Oleg Serga, spokesman for the bank, said in a Dev.ua comment.

The official press release explains that PrivatBank, on the contrary, plans to expand its own IT team and changes the management system to a more modern one.

Of course, by creating new technologies and digital services, serving more than 20 million customers, the bank has no plans to reduce IT personnel, but constantly attracts new talents and the best market specialists, it said.

At the same time, the liquidation of departments is caused by the desire to restructure the "aichi" system, which was created in the bank at the beginning of the era of digitalization.

The publication of one of the internal documents without providing the appropriate context for organizational changes in the bank is deceptive and can lead to conclusions that do not correspond to reality, the report said.

In total, PrivatBank employs more than 2,200 IT specialists by the end of November 2021, excluding the digital banking team.^[1]

2020

Lawsuit against Igor Kolomoisky in Cyprus

In November 2021, it became known that Privatbank decided to sue $5.5 billion from its former owner Igor Kolomoisky. The trial will take place in the Limassol court in Cyprus. The subject of the lawsuit is compensation for damage due to fraud and money laundering, which were carried out under the leadership of Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov in Privatbank.

Banks of Ukraine began to exchange digital documents through the state application "Dіya"

In mid-October 2020 banks Ukraine , they began to exchange digital documents through the state application "Dіya." The first to support this initiative were Privatbank"," "A-Bank" and the virtual Monobank, said the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov at a briefing "Digitalization of banking services: first victories and plans." More. here

Court decision to pay $350 million to Surkis brothers

In September 2020, the Kyiv court ruled in favor of local businessmen brothers Grigory and Igor Surkisov. They are close to the former owner of the bank, Igor Kolomoisky.

The judge satisfied the claim of Surkisov offshore companies against the state Privatbank for servicing deposits that were converted into the bank's capital during nationalization (bail in). Now Surkis Ukraine must pay $250 million in debt and $100 million in interest.

Dismissal of Chief information officer Andrei Gritsenyuk

In early August 2020, it became known about the dismissal of PrivatBank Chief information officer Andrei Gritsenyuk. Roman Sulzhik, a member of the bank's supervisory board, wrote about this on his Facebook page. Read more here.

2018: Cech Petr Krumhanzl named chairman of the board

On January 10, 2018, by the decision of the Supervisory Board of PrivatBank, Czech banker Petr Krumkhanzl was appointed Chairman of the Board. As a result, he became the first foreigner to head a state-owned bank in Ukraine. Read more here.

2017: 53,000 IT specialist accounts

According to the Ministry of Finance IT: ^[2],^[2] almost half of Ukrainian IT specialists are concentrated in PrivatBank. According to the press service of the state bank, in 2017 they served 53,000 IT specialists. Through their accounts, $400 million "went" to Ukraine.

This popularity is not surprising - Privat provides programmers with many "goodies." Among them - automatic crediting of currency from large international companies, for example, Upwork, Payoneer, Google, Facebook, Apple, Toptal, Freelancer.com. Privat's press service claims that more than 1,000 non-resident firms are on this list. Another undoubted plus of the state bank is the ability to transfer reporting to the tax office through online banking and a separate contact center for freelancers and programmers.

2016

Ukraine nationalized Privatbank

On December 19, 2016, it was announced that 100% of Privatbank Igor Kolomoisky's shares will be transferred to the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance, the bank will have a new chairman of the board, Alexander Shlapak, who will form a new team of top managers. The Ukrainian government supported in December 2016 the proposal to completely nationalize Privatbank, according to the website of the Cabinet of Ministers ^[3].

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said that the situation with Privatbank threatened not only this bank, but the entire banking system of the country.

"There was a direct threat to both the bank itself and the entire banking system of Ukraine. This is obvious to us ourselves. And over the past 6 months, our key financial partners - the IMF, the World Bank, the EBRD and others - have constantly expressed serious concern about this, "the president said in his address to the Ukrainian people

.

The President added that the only way to preserve the bank and thus ensure the safety of the funds of its clients is its transfer to the ownership of the state.

"The alternative

would look irresponsible, since it would mean closing your eyes, hiding your head in the sand and waiting for the bank to fall," the head of state said.

First Deputy Chairman of Privatbank Oleg Gorokhovsky on his Facebook page described the events preceding the nationalization of the bank:

"Of course, the bank needed additional capitalization and improved collateral for loans. And there was a plan painted before 2018. But in order to fulfill it, an indispensable condition was the stable, profitable work of the bank and impeccable payment discipline..... after the outbreak of hostilities and against the backdrop of a falling economy, we survived seven information attacks. Each attack led to outflows of funds of individuals and corporate clients..... The most powerful was the last attack. Every day we updated records for the number of funds issued to frightened customers at ATMs and branches. Our ATM network has been issuing more than 2 billion hryvnias a day in recent days. Despite the fact that previous records barely reached 1.5 billion on the highest peak days. Our heroic collectors and cashiers of the recount offices worked around the clock, despite fatigue and weather conditions..... The decision to voluntarily and peacefully transfer the bank to the state was made at the moment when we realized that we might not survive this information attack, and that our clients could be at risk. "

Information that the Ukrainian government plans to nationalize PrivatBank appeared back in October 2016. The allocation of funds for these purposes, it was reported then, was agreed with the International Monetary Fund and recorded in the Memorandum of Cooperation.

As of March 31, 2016, the largest shareholders of Privatbank were Gennady Bogolyubov (direct participation - 33.2525%, indirect - 8.3244%) and Igor Kolomoisky (direct participation - 41.6572%, indirect - 8.3244%).

Residents of Ukraine per day withdrew from accounts in Privatbank a record amount of UAH 2 billion ($80 million United States) after reporting its nationalization. This was told by the Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Bank Alexander Dubilet. "We already have records - UAH 2 billion is removed daily. This did not happen even during the hostilities, then there was about UAH 1.5 billion ($60 million). UNITED STATES) "

The largest bank in Ukraine in terms of assets

According to the National Bank of Ukraine, as of July 1, 2016, in terms of total assets (268.85 billion hryvnia), the bank was the largest among 108 banks operating in Ukraine.

2015: PrivatBank will pay customers access to 1C service in the cloud

On March 5, 2015, PrivatBank announced the provision of a cloud service for automation of management and accounting at small and medium-sized enterprises - 1C: Small Business Management for Ukraine^[4].

The program is integrated with the online bank Privat24 for Business for data exchange. The cloud service registers both already completed and planned business operations.

According to representatives of the bank, the cloud solution will save money to companies that will abandon the usual 1C installation versions, server equipment and software, and programmer services. The service is available for customers around the clock from anywhere in the world - just connect to the Internet. All work on updating and supporting applications in the service is automatically performed by the provider.

The service includes all the functions of the local "1C," but additional features from PrivatBank:

• exchange of payment documents with the bank,
• tools for working with salary projects,
• information interaction with the bank
• management of tax invoices for electronic VAT registration.

The program is available for use by multiple companies or private entrepreneurs, both independent and operating within the same business. If the company has a local 1C system, PrivatBank customers can use the free Privat24-1C application.

2014: NFC Payments Launch

In February 2014, PrivatBank introduced its "cloud" NFC wallet in Russia, which will allow smartphone owners to make contactless payments from any bank account or card, without the need to purchase special cards, stickers or telephone SIM cards. This service will be able to use other banks based on an open API.

According to Alexander Vityaz, Deputy Chairman of the Board of PrivatBank, during the presentation of the global service, the new technology radically solves the problem of the availability of contactless payments to mass users and makes it possible to turn any modern smartphone into a secure electronic wallet.

"Yesterday, in order to provide customers with the opportunity for contactless payment, any bank needed only to sign 9 documents of 287 pages in terms of bureaucracy, not to mention the need to issue special cards, labels or use" new "SIM cards of mobile operators," Alexander Vityaz said. "Therefore, no one was even surprised that this technology was so poorly represented not only in our country, but also in many developed financial markets."

"Cloud" NFC payments using smartphones are accepted by any terminals operating using this technology in the trading network of various countries of the world - the technology was tested both in Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Germany, and the USA, Canada, Singapore and other countries.

To use your smartphone as an NFC wallet, you need to install the Privat24 or LiqPay payment application, log in by phone number and connect your bank cards. In the near future, the "cloud" NFC will work in one of the popular payment services UBANK.

The new technology will be available to mass users of Android mobile devices with a built-in NFC chip in March, after the official release of the new version of the 4.4 KitKat operating system. Any banks can use this technology to expand the capabilities of their mobile services - PrivatBank has already made the API of the new service publicly available.

Indeed, in Russia and Ukraine, the use of NFC in mobile banking has so far remained very limited. One of the restraining moments for the development of the technology was precisely the need to reissue mobile SIM-cards and other additional manipulations with devices, as well as a poorly developed infrastructure for receiving NFC payments, so the available services did not become mass.

Nevertheless, a number of banks and operators in these countries have already launched test projects in the field of NFC, however, differing from the cloud proposed by PrivatBank and a single API. One of the first NFC projects on the Russian market was launched by MTS in Moscow (the set includes a special MTS SIM card with MasterCard PayPass technology associated with the MTS Money bank card).

In July 2013, MegaFon and a subsidiary of MegaLabs, AK BARS Bank and the international payment system MasterCard launched a joint NFC project in the capital of Tatarstan - a SIM card with MobileMasterCardPayPass technology and a banking application based on the Gold MasterCard multi-service card from AK BARS Bank.

In Ukraine, since January 2014, Kyivstar subscribers who are Alfa-Bank customers will be able to use the NFC payment service using a mobile phone with a special SIM card and a mobile phone with an NFC module. In December 2013, it became known that MasterCard and Samsung will launch NFC payments in Ukraine in the first quarter of 2014.

2012:22 million customers in 12 countries

PrivatBank International Banking Group serves over 22 million corporate and retail clients in 12 countries, including Russia, Georgia, Latvia, Italy, Portugal, China, Great Britain, Cyprus, Germany, Spain, Kazakhstan. According to RIA Reporting, in 2012 PrivatBank became one of the TOP-10 banks in the CIS, and in the ranking of TOP-1000 world banks PrivatBank ranks 9th in the top ten largest banks in Central and Eastern Europe.

Russia At that time, PrivatBank served clients through a subsidiary bank CJSC MKB "(Moskomprivatbank General License CENTRAL BANK OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION No. 2827 of April 23, 2012). According to RBC. Rating, the bank is included in the TOP-100 of Russian banks - as of October 1, 2012, the bank's assets amount to 44.16 billion (rubles 89th place in Russia), the deposit portfolio - 33.62 billion (44th place in Russia).

• Equity: UAH 16,746,979 thousand (1.01.2012)
• Assets: UAH 145 118 473 th. (1.01.2012)
• Net profit: UAH 1,425,816 thousand (1.01.2012)

Bank QR codes

Main article: Privatbank QR codes

Notes