TOP-13 Most Reliable Banks of Ukraine — YouControl

What bank should Ukrainians entrust their hard-earned money to? And where should a domestic company open accounts? There are risks everywhere. But where is the least number of them and what banks have the highest financial stability? The analysts of YouControl found out this with the help of a new tool – FinScore for banks.

Currently 76 banks operate in Ukraine with various degrees of success – this is more than twice as little as 5 years ago. Such a number remained after intensive collapses of banks over 2014-2016. Then dozens of insolvent and “schemes-related” banks were withdrawn from the market. At present the purification process is over and the situation has returned to a state of a new balance. But the banking sector has undergone not only quantitative changes.

Market Condition: Stabilization and Responding to New Challenges

“The level of capitalization of the banks which had undergone a systemic crisis increased significantly. According to the results of the regular stress testing and assessment of assets quality, the banks continue ramping up a protective buffer in the event of future crises. And starting from 2018 the banking sector registers historic profitability records. Not only a tough monetary policy of the National Bank of Ukraine and high interest rates but also a more balanced loan policy of the banks themselves contribute to that.

The banks have already drawn conclusions from the previous crisis, improved their risk management systems. This allowed them to reduce expenses on covering credit risks for new loans, to refuse to lend to unreliable large business groups and to refocus on the loan market for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and consumer lending. The trend towards reducing the number of territorial branches of banks, expanding the presence on the Internet, moving to the digitalization of banking services continues in the market as a key guarantee of preserving competitive advantages,” Roman Kornyliuk, a Candidate of Economic Sciences, a financial analyst of YouControl, tells about the current state of the banking sector.

However, according to the expert, among the key problems of the market the following ones remain:

• a high share of state-owned banks in the system (55% of total assets) with large ballast of toxic loans, considerable volumes of the portfolio of government bonds in incomes, a tendency towards distorting competition in the market (for example, through the obligation of state-owned enterprises to be served in state-owned banks);

•  the plan for the privatization of state-owned banks has not been implemented yet;

•  uncertainty of court decisions regarding PrivatBank, which, in case of a sharp change in its existing status quo, may cause banking panic and the contagion effect throughout the whole banking system;

•  chronic problems with lending to large businesses because of distrust caused by the history of defaults and weak standards;

•  the presence of signs of the formation of a “bubble” in the consumer lending sector;

•  the growth of deposits of the population in banks mainly on current accounts and short-term deposits, while the share of long-term deposits remains insufficient;

•  external threats to banks, for example, the risk of budget non-fulfillment and the formation of an excessive budget deficit, that will increase the pressure on the balance of payments of the country and, consequently, the exchange rate.

Thus on the one hand the crisis and total riskiness of dealing with banks retreats but on the other hand it cannot be said that the Ukrainian banking system has reached a certain state of perfection. It is also necessary to take into account the fact that the banks which collapsed a few years ago also looked reliable from most clients’ perspective and did not cause great worries. At any time another bank may not withstand the challenges of the market, competition, internal problems and it may repeat the fate of the liquidated financial institutions. But such changes and preconditions of the “end” do not arise within one day. And it is extremely important to monitor both the market itself and to carefully analyze the bank with which cooperation is planned. This applies to both ordinary depositors and businesses.

Choosing a Bank: What to Pay Attention To

The disturbances, which the banking market had suffered from, forced both businesses and the population to be more careful about relations with financial institutions. But to be forever afraid and to keep getting reinsured is not a way out too.

“After the crisis the population realized their past mistakes and converted significant volumes of their deposits in private domestic and Russian banks into cash or transferred them to more reliable state-owned and foreign banks. However recently the recovery of the growth rate of the deposit base of certain private banks belonging to Ukrainian owners has been observed. Statistics indicate that under the conditions of macrofinancial stabilization people again start responding to high deposit rates. Another very important fact is that they consider the level of service and the possibility of using modern digital solutions, in particular, convenient mobile applications for managing their own deposits. At this stage many reliable European banks lose competition for increasing deposits to more affordable, convenient and generous domestic banks that intensively invest in the digitalization of services,” Roman Kornyliuk said.

Thus the convenience and profitability of cooperation becomes the decisive factor while choosing a bank. Business has resources and more often thoroughly checks the bank at which it plans to open an account or a salary project, spending a lot of effort and time on this, but for private clients it is more difficult to do.

For a wise choice of a bank each potential client should find indicators of the individual credit rating of a bank, that is calculated by rating agencies. It is also worth checking which place a financial institution occupies in the ratings developed by the specialized mass media (Minfin.com.ua, Mind.ua, Novoe vremia) together with market experts. It will also be useful to read reviews and news about a bank in the media, to analyze its owners and beneficiaries and a business model. At a deeper level attention can even be paid to the financial indicators of the performance of a financial institution, to its compliance with the regulations of the National Bank of Ukraine. It is not too difficult to take the first steps of checking, but in oder to understand financial indicators and regulations people who do not have economic education may lack the expertise and knowledge of what to pay attention to and where to look for information.

In order to simplify the process of checking for business and to provide the population with a ready answer to how financially stable and therefore reliable a bank is, the financial analyst of YouControl Roman Kornyliuk has developed the FinScore tool exclusively for the analysis of banks.

Financial scoring for banks is a system for assessing the financial reliability of a bank. The FinScore index is based on 25 indicators, among which there are the regulations of the National Bank of Ukraine and financial ratios that comprehensively reflect the state of liquidity, capital adequacy, profitability, credit, investment and currency risks of a bank. The risk indicators, used to build the index, can predict the probability of bankruptcy of a bank. At the same time users who want to make the most reasonable decision on cooperation with a bank should analyze the bank comprehensively, in particular, according to the criteria provided above.

Read more: YouControl method of financial scoring of banks

The FinScore tool can be used by everyone as it is available even in the free Open Data tariff!

The Expert’s Tip: TOP-13 Most Stable Banks in Financial Terms

On the basis of the FinScore index for banks you can determine the list of financial institutions that have the highest indicator of financial stability (in the YouControl system it is marked by the letter A). 13 banks have reached this TOP formed according to the results of their work in the first quarter of 2019.

It is important to emphasize that one of the criteria for calculating the index is “Access to resources and reliability of the beneficiary” of a bank. It takes into account, in particular, the possibility of access to state budget resources (for domestic banks) and financial support from shareholders (for the foreign ones). As for the second direction, it is important what is the country of origin of the final beneficiaries of a financial institution, to which extent they will be able to help Ukrainian “daughters” in case of a crisis or other problems. After all, as the experience shows, none of the banks belonging to international European banking groups has become insolvent during recent collapses of banks. Thus it is interesting to see which countries are presented among the TOP-13 most stable banks.

The fact that a bank is financially stable does not necessarily mean that it has the highest indicators for assets (attracted funds placed and used for profit making and maintenance of liquidity), loans and deposits. In general, all solvent banks of Ukraine have more than 1,341 trillion UAH of assets, over 573 billion UAH of loans and almost 964 billion UAH of deposits. The “ownership” of the TOP-13 most reliable banks varies greatly by these indicators (Table 1).

Table 1. Indicators of work of the TOP-13 banks of Ukraine as of April 1, 2019

It is interesting to know that SEB Corporate Bank in terms of market power (calculated with the help of the YouControl tool MarketScore) received the grade C (the gradation ranges from the highest indicator A to the lowest one D). This bank totally has only 0,1% of assets, loans and deposits in the banking system. However this did not prevent it from working stably and being reliable.

Simultaneously such a giant as PrivatBank, which expectedly has the MarketScore indicator A, also reached the TOP. It owns 21% of all assets of the banking system, 9,6% of loans and 23% of deposits. In general, in addition to PrivatBank, only Raiffeisen Bank Aval and UkrSibBank received more than 3% by all these indicators.

Read more: YouControl method of bank market score

FinScore for Banks: Who Will It Be Useful To?

FinScore is a versatile tool that can be useful to an expert on the banking market or an experienced entrepreneur, as well as an ordinary Ukrainian who does not want to fall into a financial trap of a dubious bank.

In general, the index can help the population:

•  when looking for a reliable bank, for example, to place a fix-term deposit. The higher and more stable the FinScore indicator is in the course of time, the greater the chances are that the bank will not face bankruptcy or financial difficulties and will return the full amount of deposit in time. This is especially relevant in case of a sudden systemic crisis;

•  when choosing the main bank in order to open card accounts, through which payments are made. The more financially stable the bank is, the less the risk of unsuccessful payments and various kinds of failures is, especially during the period of instability;

•  for the fast and timely monitoring of changes in the financial condition of the banks of which a person is already a client. If FinScore for banks starts sharply dropping quarter by quarter, it is a reason for studying more closely the causes of the deterioration of the financial condition and asking managers about the reasons for the deterioration of indicators.

To enterprises the index will be useful:

•  when choosing a bank for deposit and current accounts. Reliability of the bank is a guarantee of safety of funds;

•  when assessing banks as counterparties in case of the implementation of various partner projects. Financial institutions often cooperate with enterprises: with car showrooms in auto lending; with retail chains in consumer lending; with construction companies in mortgage lending, etc. Thus, while starting cooperation with a bank, a company must make sure of the correctness of their decisions, because a mistake in this issue can cause the collapse of the entire business;

•  for the monitoring of the reliability of those banks with which cooperation has already been established for certain projects;

•  when taking out a loan. In case of cooperation in this direction with an unreliable bank a company will lose its money, like in the event of a deposit, but during a default the loan may be sold to a third party creditor, to debt collecting companies as well. New “debt holders” may initiate a change in terms of repayment and will not comply with prior informal arrangements with a banker.

FinScore in YouControl: Where and What to Find?

For users who are interested in determining the financial stability of a bank quickly and without additional research should just visit its profile on YouControl, where the FinScore indicator is immediately visible.

However for some potential or already real clients of a bank, who want to know more about the specific indicators of its work and to find out what factors affect the FinScore indicator, just letters may not be enough. And they have the opportunity to visit the section “Finance” in the card of the bank, to choose “Financial Scoring” and to study all the information by themselves.

In the detailed version the FinScore tool allows you to see the index itself and individual indicators in dynamics. This forms a general picture of the direction in which a bank moves: to strengthen its positions or to collapse.

Start checking right now!