NBU Governor Pyshny wins The Banker's Central Banker of the Year 2024 award

MOSCOW. Jan 9 (Interfax) - National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Governor Andrei Pyshny has been named the Central Banker of the Year 2024 in The Banker's Global and Europe category.

Among Pyshny's key achievements in 2023, The Banker listed his role in maintaining Ukraine's economic sustainability despite the crisis, including increased confidence in the hryvnia. According to data provided by the NBU, hryvnia term deposits of individuals rose by 28% in January-November 2023. The volume of loans on the domestic debt market almost doubled. Inflation fell from 26.6% to 5.1% in January-November 2023. The Banker also mentioned Ukraine's decision to abandon monetary financing and a switch over to a managed flexibility rate for the hryvnia, which enabled a decrease in the difference between cash and non-cash rates.

The Banker also mentioned the successful negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on opening a new four-year Extended Fund Facility program and its implementation within a year, as well as the Power Banking program, which enabled banks to provide essential financial services to the public even during long power outages.

The Banker's Central Banker of the Year annual award celebrates the officials who have best managed to stimulate growth and stabilize their country's economy.

Pyshny, in turn, has announced the establishment of three NBU awards, such as the Professional of the Year, the Department of the Year and the Team of the Year.

"It is a completely new approach toward awarding the best of the best. The latter nomination, which is new to the NBU, is an award not to an individual division, but for cross-functional cooperation between divisions as part of one project," Pyshny said.

Thus, the NBU's Professional of the Year award has been presented to Ivan Pritsak, deputy head of the legal department's unit for judicial protection of regulatory functions, in recognition of his success in defending the NBU's position on PrivatBank's nationalization. The Department of the Year award was won by the bank's financial monitoring department, led by Anna Lipskaya.

The Team of the Year category has five winners, Pyshny said. They include the team in charge of developing Ukraine's payment infrastructure led by information technologies department director Vladimir Nagornyuk, the team that authored the forex restrictions easing strategy, the transition to a managed flexibility rate and the reinstatement of inflation targeting led by monetary policy and economic analysis department head Vladimir Lepushinsky and open markets department director Alexei Lupin, and the Power Banking project's team headed by communications department director Yulia Yevtushenko, head of the systemic risk analysis directorate Maxim Drobyazgin and head of the directorate for protecting financial service consumers' rights Olga Lobaichuk.

The other two winners in the Team of the Year category are the team that was in charge of Sense Bank's nationalization led by director of the integrated banks oversight department's first oversight unit Sergei Zarozhevsky and the sectoral archive team led by operations maintenance department director Yaroslav Ilnitsky.