Poll: 22% of Ukrainians have no bank accounts

A total of 76% of Ukrainians say they did not face any problem in their interaction with banks in the past two years, while 22% of the pollees say they do not have bank accounts.

The share of respondents who keep more than half of their funds in the banks grew from 8% to 13%, and, therefore, confidence in banks is gradually being restored. It is important that distrust of banks is no longer mentioned as a leading factor for not having a bank account, according to findings of a nationwide survey of Ukrainian consumers of financial services, which were announced at an online round table on May 21.

It was conducted for the Deposit Guarantee Fund with the support of the USAID Financial Sector Transformation project in December 2019.

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At the same time, the interest of Ukrainians in financial services has decreased compared with 2017: for example, 63% of the pollees noted their interest in financial services against 37% of those who are "not likely to be interested" in 2017, while this ratio was 58% against 42% in 2019.

According to the study, most of Ukrainians are aware of guaranteeing deposits in the hryvnia (awareness grew from 67% to 86%) and in foreign currency (awareness grew from 51% to 59%). Almost half of the respondents are familiar with the size of the maximum guaranteed amount of compensation. However, the number of those who believe that the guaranteed amount should be increased has grown. For example, the share of respondents who are satisfied with the current level of compensation was 47% in 2017, while it decreased to 41% in 2019.

The survey was conducted by the Info Sapiens research agency among 2,144 respondents aged 18 and older who declared at least the minimum level of interest in information about financial services in Ukraine in December 2019. The poll was conducted in all regions of Ukraine, except for Crimea and the Russia-occupied areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.