Ukrainian banks have stopped shrinking their branch networks, which was caused by the full-scale invasion and temporary occupation of the territories, the National Bank of Ukraine reported on Telegram on April 22.
This trend has been consolidated, as the number of branches has not changed significantly for more than a year.
The largest number of branches since the beginning of the full-scale war was lost in the second and third quarters of 2022 at 525 and 473, respectively. However, over the past five quarters (since the beginning of 2023), the total reduction in the network amounted to only 228 branches.
At the same time, the largest reduction in the network since the relevant statistics have been kept (since 2008) was in 2014 (minus 4,208 branches), 2015 (3,211) and 2009 (2,197). In 2022, a total of 1,349 branches were closed.
“An important fact is that the reduction in the number of branches does not lead to a decrease in financial activity of customers, in particular, the number of accounts and their balances are constantly growing,” said the central bank.
“This is largely due to the evolutionary development of remote service channels. This is economically beneficial for banks and convenient for customers, and therefore also affects the reduction of the branch network.”
This is confirmed by the constant growth in the number of customers who prefer remote services.
While at the end of 2021, 78% of business entities and 63.8% of individuals (2.3 million and 44.2 million customers, respectively) were served remotely, by the end of 2023, 89.2% of business entities and 79.5% of individuals (2.9 million and 62.3 million customers, respectively) were served remotely.
The financial regulator nonetheless expects even a slight increase in the total number of bank branches in 2024.