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Ukraine’s largest bank has learned that resilience in wartime is partly financial and partly psychological. PrivatBank must judge when borrowers deserve flexibility, keep branches operating through power and communications failures, and prepare for a reconstruction effort far larger than the country’s banking system can finance. Its performance is impressive, but it also reveals the gap between surviving the war and funding the peace.
Credit survives the missiles
A cooling-equipment manufacturer illustrates the bank’s approach. After a Russian strike destroyed its factory, the company asked for a few days rather than abandoning its loan. PrivatBank granted a repayment holiday; the borrower moved into an unfinished building, retained its workers, bought used machinery and resumed production within three months. The bank is now considering lending to it again.
Such cases have not wrecked the loan book. Only 2.9% of PrivatBank’s core loans were non-performing in the first half of 2026, and management expects the share to fall to 2.6% by year-end. That is only modestly above the roughly 2% typical in peaceful parts of Europe. Chief executive Mikael Bjorknert credits a strong willingness to repay, but the result also reflects a lender prepared to distinguish viable firms hit by war from businesses that cannot recover.
Keeping calm is part of banking
PrivatBank’s more than 1,000 branches may close during an attack, but otherwise they are expected to remain open. Batteries, generators and Starlink connections keep them functioning when electricity or communications fail. A closure caused merely by an outage could be mistaken for evidence of a wider crisis, so operational continuity helps maintain public confidence as well as access to money.
The institution itself carries a troubled legacy. Ukraine nationalised it in 2016 after finding a \$5.5bn hole in its books, and the Supreme Court only recently dismissed a former owner’s attempt to reverse the takeover. Its governance now follows international norms, and officials eventually want it and other state-owned lenders returned to private ownership. That reform would fit Ukraine’s ambition to join the European Union, but privatisation is unlikely while the war continues.
Meanwhile, PrivatBank is trying to become more than a dominant retail bank. It serves 18.1m individuals and 945,000 businesses, and its loan book grew by 40% in 2025, or about 30% after inflation, with a similar pace in the first half of 2026. The goal is to become a universal lender capable of supporting reconstruction and operating under European rules.
Reconstruction needs deeper markets
That transformation will not be enough on its own. Ukraine still lacks clear rules for construction and mortgages and a well-functioning domestic capital market. Rebuilding will require hundreds of billions of dollars, most from abroad. PrivatBank has assets of 925bn hryvnia, around \$20bn; despite its dominance at home, that would make it only the fourth-largest bank in much smaller Slovakia.
Foreign lenders will therefore be essential. Several stayed after Russia’s invasion, and more may enter once a durable peace makes investment less hazardous. Yet they will need confidence in Ukraine’s institutions as well as the capacity to absorb losses. Years of war have demonstrated the country’s repayment discipline and operational ingenuity. Converting that resilience into reconstruction finance will require stronger markets, credible regulation and continued progress against corruption.
PrivatBank shows that a banking system can keep credit moving under bombardment. The harder task is building one large and trusted enough to finance what comes after.