By Vanora Bennett

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) have signed an agreement  with a view to boosting human capital resilience in Ukraine by working together to make the financial sector more accessible to war veterans.

Under the agreement, the EBRD and NBU will support financial institutions across Ukraine to adopt standards set out in a charter designed to make banks more accessible to hundreds of thousands of veterans, both as clients and employees. So far, 27 banks have signed up. The charter scales up work that the EBRD has been doing with its own client companies to enhance human capital resilience since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine two years ago.

The war has chipped away at Ukraine’s skilled workforce, with several million people living outside the country or internally displaced inside Ukraine and hundreds of thousands more serving in the armed forces. A key element in planning the country’s continued economic resilience is boosting its human capital by attracting more people to return and re-enter the country’s much reduced workforce.

At a Kyiv conference today on veteran reintegration, the EBRD’s Managing Director for Financial Institutions, Francis Malige, and NBU Chairman Andrii Pyshnyy signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on promoting the charter to support veterans across Ukraine’s financial sector.

“Since February 2022, the EBRD has provided support to its clients on war-related emergency needs, helping to enhance the retention and reintegration of staff, skills development opportunities, and HR and operational processes,” said Francis Malige. “But the support that EBRD as an institution can provide directly to its clients is not enough. With close to 880,000 people directly participating in military operations as of January 2024, we need bold, collective, and scalable approaches that can benefit many more people across the country.”

Ensuring the barrier-free and inclusive nature of the financial sector stands as a distinct objective within Ukraine’s Financial Sector Development Strategy and a priority for the country’s national bank, said the NBU’s Andriy Pyshnyy. It was essential for the NBU to start adapting the financial sector to the country’s unprecedented new needs – the needs of war veterans – as soon as possible in terms of both the availability of financial services and the sector’s capability to help soldiers return to work in a civilian capacity.

“I am convinced that the charter is an effective tool that will unite banks around the issue of helping eterans and their families,” said Mr Pyshnyy. “Today, all of us, Ukrainians, are not only writing the history of our nation, but also evolving as a society. We are constructing and reaffirming our principles, where equality of opportunity and respect stand among the key values. An equal sign should stand between the opportunities of civilians and veterans.  I am convinced that together with the EBRD and the entire banking system, we will be able to effectively promote the availability and barrier-free access to financial services for all citizens.”

The aim of the charter is for participating banks to formally mark a commitment to take action to support veterans’ reintegration into civilian life, as employees and clients of the financial sector, as they retire from active military duty. The charter encourages signatory companies to make financial services easier for veterans to access and use; to invest in accessibility technology to modify workplaces for veterans; to ensure spaces are risk-free for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder; and to introduce veteran-friendly, inclusive, human resources policies and practices.

This will make it easier for veteran customers to access basic or more sophisticated financial services to meet their needs as retail and business clients, and for veteran financial sector employees to be welcomed back to an accessible, inclusive, and safe workplace. 

Financial institutions are uniquely positioned to support veterans. Ukrainian’s financial sector is a large employer, encompassing over 210,000 workers in 2021, and it has contributed a significant number of personnel to the military. In 2021, before the war began, Ukrainian financial institutions provided services to over 30 million customers.

Alongside the charter, the EBRD also launched its own Veterans Reintegration Programme at the conference, with the signing of guarantee facilities with two major Ukrainian banks to unlock a total of €250 million of new financing for Ukraine’s private sector. These are the first two signings in the sector to include a commitment to develop a veteran reintegration programme for the lenders and their clients.

Future partners in this programme will work with the EBRD to fund support for veterans who wish to establish or grow their business, as well as companies that primarily serve veterans or are implementing veteran-friendly policies and trainings.

The programme also aims to provide technical assistance to the EBRD’s partner financial institutions, supporting reintegration of veterans as their employees and clients.  And it will support veterans’ reintegration in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and smaller corporates by empowering financial institutions to transfer knowledge and provide advisory to their own clients on veteran reintegration policies.

“The EBRD’s focus on promoting human capital resilience is a central element of the Bank’s support for Ukraine. It provides critical assistance to employers who struggle not only with a shrinking national workforce but also with the need to reintegrate increasing numbers of demobilised workers back into jobs. According to the Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs, the total number of veterans is expected to exceed four or five million by the time this war ends,” said the EBRD’s Director for Gender and Economic Inclusion, Barbara Rambousek.

She added: “I am proud of the EBRD’s strong commitment and active programmes to develop timely and concrete solutions to support the reintegration of veterans into Ukraine’s labour force. We will continue to stand with Ukraine as a strategic partner throughout this difficult period, towards the eventual reconstruction and economic recovery of the country.”

The Kyiv veterans’ reintegration conference today was organised by the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine, alongside the National Bank of Ukraine and the EBRD, in partnership with Korn Ferry, Kearney, and the Ukrainian Corporate Governance Academy (UCGA). About 300 participants attended.