In the first month since the National Bank of Ukraine started issuing individual e-licenses (since 3 July through 3 August 2017), a total of 23 e-licenses have been granted to individuals. Over this period, eight authorized banks have seized the opportunity to use a new license issuance system.
About half of the e-licenses have been issued to allow individuals to make investments abroad and less than half of the remaining licenses have been granted to allow individuals to deposit funds in their own accounts held abroad.
During the first week some technical e-licenses were issued to test the license issuance system, while during the second week banks started performing operations on the basis of e-licenses. The operations were de facto performed on the basis of 16 е-licenses.
The value of transactions performed on the basis of 16 е-licenses amounted to USD 437,000, and therefore had no material impact on the FX market.
As a side note, an e-license is issued electronically to individuals to allow them to transfer foreign currency abroad up to the equivalent of USD 50, 000 to perform three types of FX operations:
- investments abroad;
- depositing funds in their own accounts abroad; and
- the fulfilment of obligations to non-residents arising from life insurance contracts.
More information about e-licenses can be found in the Q&A section that contains answers to frequently asked questions on this issue.