The National Bank of Ukraine is considering the possibility of founding a clearing bank in Ukraine based on an existing large-scale bank, Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Kateryna Rozhkova said during a roundtable in Kyiv.
”We are thinking about the potential to assign to someone the function of a clearing bank. It is not a function of the National Bank, and the National Bank will not take this function upon itself. We will not create anything specifically, it is necessary to oblige an existing large bank,” Rozhkova said.
She noted that the NBU was gradually shifting away from checking foreign currency contracts, which it once introduced to stop money siphoning from Ukraine. However, when a clearing bank is created, compliance checks, including to combat money laundering, would be mandatory.
According to Rozhkova, the disconnection by Deutsche Bank of a number of Ukrainian banks is a problem for these financial institutions, but not a catastrophe for the country`s banking system, since the financial institutions have no direct correspondent accounts account for only 8% of the total volume of export-import transactions.
At the same time, Rozhkova stressed that such a precedent was a world trend that was connected with many violations related to money siphoning from countries such as Ukraine, as well as related investigations and penalties.
Memo. The largest players in international payments are Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and the Bank of New York. Currently, only the Bank of New York services loro-payments of small Ukrainian banks, since Commerzbank earlier halted its services, while in March of this year, Deutsche Bank cut a number of Ukrainian customers from its services without explaining the reasons.
