Financial Sector Development

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), the National Securities and Stock Market Commission (NSSMC), the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine (MoF), and the Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF) are implementing the Strategy of Ukrainian Financial Sector Development until 2025.

In 2020–2022, despite the impact of the full-scale russian military aggression and the global COVID-19 pandemic, the financial regulators have been making progress in implementing the Strategy of Ukrainian Financial Sector Development until 2025. As of the end of 2021, 85% of measures envisaged by the annual road map were either completed or being implemented in line with the approved schedule.

The Strategy sets the priorities and goals for the financial sector development until 2025.

The Strategy is drafted to ensure that the reform and development of Ukraine’s financial sector moves forward in line with international best practices and the actions ate taken as envisaged by the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and Ukraine’s other international commitments.

The strategy replaced the Comprehensive Program of Ukrainian Financial Sector Development until 2020, which identified reform priorities for regulators over the previous five years.

On 28 May 2019, the NBU, the NSSMC, the National Commission for State Regulation in the Financial Services Market (under liquidation since 1 July 2020), the DGF, and the MoF signed the Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation on drafting and implementing the Strategy. The work to create the Strategy was done in March–December 2019. The interagency working group tasked with drawing up the Strategy included more than 200 people. The working group held two rounds of public discussions with experts and representatives of the financial market, professional associations, NGOs, and international organizations.

The heads of the entities that drafted the Strategy signed it on 16 January 2020 and approved it with their resolutions under established procedures. The NBU Board approved the Strategy on 26 December 2019 with its Decision No. 1010.

In 2020, the financial regulators collected and analyzed proposals to the Strategy from those who implemented it, the field experts, and representatives of the financial market. The proposals were approved by stakeholders during two meetings of the Communication platform and a series of other meetings. The first revision of the Strategy was based on the proposals pursuant to the decision taken at the meeting of the Committee on Financial Developmentin early 2021. The revised Strategy was approved by NBU Board Decision No. 97 dated 18 March 2021.

In view of russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, financial regulators have also been revising the strategy in 2022 and plan to present the updated version in 2023, taking into account the priority measures defined by the Recovery Plan for Ukraine developed by the National Council for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.

The NBU is open to discussions and continues to gather proposals for the next revision of the Strategy at its e-mail address: [email protected].

The Strategy covers five strategic directions of development: financial stability, macroeconomic development, financial inclusion, development of financial markets and innovation development. Each direction has its own strategic goals and performance indicators.

Strategic direction 1. Financial Stability

Effective regulation of the financial sector and improvement of supervisory approaches
- Improving the model of the financial sector regulation
- Enhancing the institutional capacity and independence of regulators and the DGF
- Harmonizing regulatory requirements and international cooperation
- Developing the supervision and oversight of the financial sector, and combatting abuse
- Improving the deposit guarantee system and resolution of insolvent financial institutions

Transparent financial sector
- Increasing the openness of information sharing between financial sector regulators and government agencies
- Implementing BEPS Action Plan in Ukraine
- Joining the international system for the exchange of information on financial accounts

Financial sector’s resilience to challenges
- Ensuring control over credit risks
- Increasing the resilience requirements to professional stock market participants
- Preventing liquidity shortages
- Limits on risk concentration
- Managing the systematic impact of distorted incentives and ensuring competition

Increasing the quality of corporate governance and risk management in the financial sector
- Increasing the level of corporate governance of financial sector participants
- Strengthening the internal control system for financial sector participants
- Increasing the effectiveness of the investor rights enforcement system
- Introducing social and environmental responsibility

Strategic direction 2. Macroeconomic development

Ensuring the sustainability of public finances
- Pursuing a sound fiscal policy and coordination in the budgeting framework
- Ensuring debt sustainability and reducing fiscal risks
- Development of the domestic market for government securities

Support of lending to the economy
- Support of lending to SMEs
- Adapting IFIs’ quasi-equity instruments for use in Ukraine
- Encouraging lending to agricultural businesses, including farms, against pledged land
- Development of syndicated lending
- Reducing the barriers to mortgage lending
- Export promotion
- Stimulating the development of the nonbank lending market
- Building the infrastructure to effectively manage problem assets
- Promotion of trade financing and factoring development

Enhancing protection of rights of creditors and investors
- Development of nonbank lending
- Expanding possibilities for economic entities in financial leasing for replacing fixed assets

Protection of creditors’ and investors’ rights
- Improving the obligations performance framework
- Improving the efficiency of judicial proceedings and enforcement of court rulings
- Establishing alternative ways to resolve disputes

Creating conditions for raising long-term funding for the economy
- Introducing pillar 2 of the pension system
- Streamlining the laws on the regulation of pillar 3 of the pension system, and raising the efficiency of nonstate pension funds
- Establishing and regulation of crowdfunding platforms operation
- Introducing the regulation of and establishing a national investment fund
- Development of life insurance market in Ukraine

Strategic direction 3. Financial inclusion

Improving accessibility and use of financial services
- Promoting development of payment infrastructure for cashless transactions, including in rural and remote areas
- Creating conditions for development of remote distribution channels for financial services, including remote opening of accounts

Enhancing protection of consumer rights in financial services
- Developing and implementing the regulation of the market conduct of financial sector participants
- Ensuring transparency of information on financial services and products
- Protection of depositors and investors

Improving the financial literacy of the general public
- Holding awareness raising events for different target audiences
- Development of the framework of financial literacy competencies

Strategic direction 4. Financial market development

Promoting the development of markets of nonbank financial services
- Deregulation of markets for nonbank financial services (except for the securities market) with a low level of risks
- Development of the insurance services market
- Expanding the possibilities of using financial leasing by economic entities
- Expanding the possibilities of using transactions with credit unions by economic entities
- Enhancing the protection of trustors of housing trust funds (HTF)
- Ensuring tax incentives and harmonization of taxation system of financial sector instruments
- Introducing the comprehensive assessment of the competitiveness of Ukraine’s markets for bank and nonbank financial services
- Development of the credit history industry

Effective capital market infrastructure
- Improving the settlement and clearing infrastructure of capital markets and organized commodity markets
- Gradual implementation of international standards for the operation of the capital market infrastructure, in particular, CSDR, EMIR, MIFIR, MIFID ІІ, PFMI requirements
- Ensuring the upgrade, consolidation, and development of the stock-exchange and depository infrastructure of capital markets and organized commodity markets
- Ensuring the development of the institution of nonbank financial sector intermediaries
- Ensuring the development of the institution of rating agencies

Establishing liquid markets for financial instruments and mechanisms/instruments for mitigating the risks of financial transactions
- Introducing new and developing the existing financial instruments
- Establishing liquid markets for financial instruments and mechanisms/instruments for mitigating the risks of financial transactions
- Introducing and developing a market for assets securitization

Integrating Ukraine’s financial market into the global finance
- Facilitating the trade in hryvnia financial instruments in the international markets
- Integrating Ukraine’s financial market into the European finance, and expanding international cooperation
- Harmonization of Ukraine’s laws with EU laws on transactions with investment metals

Strategic direction 5. Innovation development

Development of a transparent architecture of the financial market and oversight
- Alignment of Ukrainian laws on payment services with EU regulations
- Introducing new payment standards and formats (ISO 20022)
- Promoting the development of new technologies for payments and money transfers
- Development of PROSTIR NPS

Developing the FinTech market, digital technologies, and regulator platforms
- Ensuring the development of digital technologies, computer-aided design, big data analysis, blockchain, automation, robotics, and AI
- Exploring the possibility of issuing the e-hryvnia, a digital currency of the central bank
- Enhancing the cybersecurity

Development of SupTech & RegTech
- Encouraging the implementation of innovative technologies in the compliance
- Introducing innovative tools for data exchange between the NBU, other state institutions, and financial market participants
- Encouraging regulators to use up-to-date IT technologies
- Improving information disclosure based on the electronic reporting standards

Development of the digital economy
- Expanding the access of market participants to public registers
- Development of the NBU’s remote identification system BankID and online financial services
- Introducing a remote transactions system in the contribution pension provisioning and crowdfunding
- Development and use of cloud technologies, development of IT infrastructure
- Spreading the use of paperless technologies

The Strategy is implemented through performance of individual events (projects) set out in the Strategy’s road map in line with the principles of project management. The Committee on Financial Development was appointed for coordination and monitoring of actions through involvement of top managers of the regulatory authorities, the MoF, the DGF, the professional associations of market participants. The Strategy is updated when the Committee on Financial Development takes a respective decision.

To implement the Strategy, the Memorandum stipulates the setting up of a steering committee and that the heads of the signatory institutions will serve on it. To this end, the Financial Stability Council resolved at its 13 December 2019 meeting to establish a Financial Development Working Group (Committee) under the Financial Stability Council.

The main tasks of the Committee are the following:

identifying the directions and priorities for the implementation of the Strategy for Ukraine’s Financial Sector Development until 2025
facilitating the coordinated implementation of the measures stipulated in the Strategy for Ukraine’s Financial Sector Development until 2025; monitoring the effectiveness of their implementation
consideration of proposed action plans for the financial sector development.

A communication platform was established at the Committee. It involves participation of the market representatives and field experts.

The Committee had meetings in January 2020 and February 2021 for taking coordination decisions. The communication platform gathered for their meetings twice in 2020.

Governor:

Kyrylo Shevchenko, NBU Governor

Deputy Governor:

Tymur Khromaiev*, Chair of the NSSMC

Council members:

Serhii, Minister of Finance of Ukraine
Svitlana Rekrut, Managing Director of the DGF
Oleksii Shaban, NBU Deputy Governor
Yuriy Draganchuk, Deputy Minister of Finance of Ukraine
Maksym Libanov, Member of the NSSMC
Andrii Olenchyk, Deputy Managing Director of the DGF

Secretary:

Arsen Makarchuk, Director of the NBU Strategy and Reforming Department

* will change due to appointment of the new Chair of the NSSMC.

Стратегія розвитку фінансового сектору України до 2025 року

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) designed the Comprehensive Program of Ukrainian Financial Sector Development Until 2020 to achieve the sustainable development of the financial market in 2015-2019 years. We were reforming Ukraine’s financial system to liberalize financial markets, create equal competition, overcome the consequences of the economic crisis, and harmonize markets. The program’s main objective was to build a fully-fledged, efficient, and effective financial market in Ukraine; to develop all segments of the market; to build market infrastructure; and to strengthen the market’s resilience to external threats.