Business Lockdown: CEO Pisaruk says Raiffeisen Bank will be ‘stronger’ after crisis

Editor’s Note: Ukraine’s businesses are struggling after the country introduced nationwide restrictions on movement and travel starting on March 12. The restrictions have been toughened since then and are set to last until at least April 24. Most businesses are closed with employees working remotely or not working at all. The exceptions include supermarkets, pharmacies, banks, parcel delivery services. The borders are closed to most forms of traffic, except Ukrainians returning by foot or by car. Most domestic transportation is closed or heavily restricted. Estimates range on how deeply the ensuing recession will harm Ukraine. The Kyiv Post talked with entrepreneurs about their daily struggles, asking how the quarantine has affected their ventures and what they are planning to do once it’s lifted.

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Oleksandr Pisaruk
CEO of Ukraine’s Raiffeisen Bank Aval since August 2019. The bank has 2.5 million clients in Ukraine.

“The quarantine has affected our business like (it’s affected) most other businesses in Ukraine and in other countries. Clients are less active and transaction volumes have slowed down. At the same time, we don’t seem to lose clients. On the contrary, we see some inflow of new clients… due to the strong reputation and financial position of the bank.

“It’s too early to judge the overall impact of quarantine on our business at this stage, as we don’t know its duration and the depth of the economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis, but we are confident it will be a very manageable impact.

“The most difficult decisions (we are making) are related to risk mitigation measures that affect our clients, such as the reduction or cancellation of credit limits. We hope for their understanding. We try to smoothen the impact on clients of such decisions as much as possible, but it’s unrealistic to expect that we could eliminate such an impact in full.

“No doubt that we will successfully navigate this crisis and come out of it stronger than before. That happened during several previous crises and it will happen this time. Raiffeisen Bank is committed to Ukraine, so we are here to stay and to be even more successful.

“We are currently operating in a fairly stable mode. On average, over 50% of our staff has switched to remote work: 75% in Kyiv and 50% across our (regional) branches and operational centers. We temporarily closed down 71 operating branches in the cities where the bank has more than one branch. Urban branches work daily while rural branches work three times a week due to lower customer traffic. We plan to maintain a similar operational mode if the quarantine is extended. At the same time, we are ready to adapt to new measures.

“It’s our job to keep going and continue servicing our clients despite difficulties. I am pleased to see efficient coordination among our staff and improved efficiency of our processes. In some sense, the crisis forced us to accelerate digital transformation and become more efficient. It motivates us to work on further improvements, to ensure that we come out of this crisis even stronger than before. Our management team has vast crisis management experience so I have no doubt we will achieve our goals.

“We don’t receive any help from the government nor local authorities and we don’t need or expect any help. The National Bank of Ukraine introduced measured relaxation of the prudential requirements for the whole banking system, similar to other central banks and regulators in developed and emerging markets. We support these actions as a classic anti-crisis measure but didn’t really need them due to our strong financial position and prudent management.

“Ukraine has implemented rather tough quarantine restrictions at a relatively early stage, so the authorities should be complimented for this. Implementing prudent anti-crisis measures and securing continued cooperation with the International Monetary Fund and other international creditors are the two main messages from the business community to the authorities.”

Source: www.kyivpost.com