The migration of the Bank’s IT systems and customer data to external cloud storage, carried out by PrivatBank in the interest of customer safety, stands out as a remarkable digital innovation in the Ukrainian banking sector. Consequently, experts from Euromoney, the leading British financial media, have named PrivatBank the best bank for digital solutions in the annual "Awards for Excellence 2023."
The experts of the media highlight that data security and data management became critically important for Ukrainian banks from the early days of the war. Moreover, the financial sector faced new challenges due to Russian airstrikes on the energy infrastructure. In response, PrivatBank prioritized and applied extra efforts to protect customer data, funds, and ensure uninterrupted access to accounts and cash and all other banking services. To achieve this, the bank migrated its IT systems from traditional data processing centers to cloud infrastructure, reducing usage of physical infrastructure to minimum.
"When at the beginning of the war in February 2022 Russian rockets hit areas within 200 meters away from our data center, we knew that migrating our operations to a cloud solution was the only way to continue our banking operations and secure clients' banking activities." said Mariush Kachmarek, a Vice President of PrivatBank's Board in charge of IT & Operations. "To grasp the scale of the work accomplished by PrivatBank's team, consider these numbers: transfer 3,500 servers, over 270 critical applications into a secure cloud environment. We secured and loaded more than 6 petabytes of customer data and transactions into the 'cloud'. And all this - less than in 45 days. As any PrivatBank customer, I felt financially secure at that time. Important to mention that by the end of October 2022 the Bank migrated remaining services and solutions to the cloud."
Euromoney has also acknowledged the importance of PrivatBank's technological and innovative solutions, which enabled all Ukrainians who cannot physically access branches, to open digital accounts and receive services remotely. PrivatBank, thanks to its convenient digital payment channels, has also become a key player in the international remittances market to Ukraine – since the start of the war, the number of international transfers received through the bank has increased by 16%.
The Euromoney "Awards for Excellence" program identifies the best banks in global, regional, and local markets that have achieved remarkable success in advancing core banking operations over the past 12 months.
