Олексій Дзюба Hot News 31 January 2025, 10:01

The CEO of Ukrposhta told what the company's future bank needs to do to catch up with monobank in terms of the number of customers

The launch of Ukrposhta Bank is scheduled to take place this year.

Ukrposhta CEO Igor Smilyansky told what the company's future bank needs to do to catch up with monobank in terms of the number of customers.

"Currently, Ukrposhta serves about 6.3 million unique customers. If all of them become customers of the postal bank, it will immediately enter the TOP-5, because among the customers of one of the market leaders, monobank, there are 7 million," he said.

Smilyansky added that the company also has the ambition to increase the bank's share in serving retirees.

"Currently, we serve about 2 million out of the country's 10 million pensioners and could not sharply increase our presence in the direction, because most new pensioners who retired recently chose banks that credit their pension to their card," the company's CEO noted.

He believes that Ukrposhta Banka will be able to provide pensioners not only with a pension payment service, but also offer convenient payment for utilities, cross-selling. “A pensioner will have an account with us, the opportunity to open a deposit, take out a loan, order medicines, subscribe to periodicals, and purchase goods, including those ordered by parcel with home delivery,” the top manager explained.

"We definitely will not inflate the bank's apparatus, on the contrary, we will minimize the cost part as much as possible. In essence, the bank will exist in the digital dimension with an offline presence on the existing Ukrposhta infrastructure," concluded Ihor Smilyansky.

We will remind you that the other day the government also decided to transfer the shares of the First Investment Bank, previously owned by Russian oligarchs, to the Ministry of Infrastructure with subsequent transfer to Ukrposhta. The launch of Ukrposhta Bank is scheduled for 2025.

Creating a postal bank in Ukraine is a long-standing idea of Ukrposhta CEO Ihor Smilyansky. In 2020, the Verkhovna Rada adopted in the first reading a law allowing Ukrposhta to provide basic banking services, and at the end of 2021, the Antimonopoly Committee allowed the company to submit documents to the NBU to acquire the small Alpari Bank for UAH 260 million.

In June of the same year, the Antimonopoly Committee approved the deal, but in 2023 the NBU rejected it due to “deficiencies in the documents.” In the same year, the sole shareholder of Alpari Bank decided to terminate the financial institution’s banking activities without terminating the legal entity. The bank effectively ceased such activities on May 14, 2024.