Alyona Mysko has been working for several weeks in a bomb shelter in Lviv. During a Zoom call a day after images and videos of Russian army war crimes in Bucha had been published, she seemed shaken.
“It was the most difficult day,” said Mysko, who is the CEO and founder of the Ukrainian fintech Fuelfinance. “For everyone it was a very huge shock. We have learned about what is going on, but now we read stories from all these people, because they have started to talk about what was going on there. It was really very bad.”
For people working at fintechs and banks in Ukraine, job stress is sky high as they try to focus on their work while missiles fly overhead, horrific atrocities are committed in nearby cities and 11 million people have been driven from their homes. But many are carrying on anyway, trying to keep business as close to normal as possible, ensure employees are safe, and support their country however they can.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “is something that is very hard to believe and accept,” said Serhiy Popov, deputy chief investment officer at one of Ukraine’s largest banks. (He declined to say which one because he is new in the job. When the war started, he was working at a Ukrainian microfinance fintech, ShvidkoGroshy.)
“Now that Russia has committed an incredibly cruel and unjustified attack on Ukraine, when you see every day the consequences of this attack, how lives and destinies are broken, it is very difficult to hold back emotions and continue to work to ensure the smooth operation of the banking system of Ukraine, to provide financing to families, relatives, to provide assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” he said.
Human safety
Employee safety has naturally become a priority for Ukrainian companies.
Most of Popov’s team have left Kyiv for western regions of the country. They are in “relatively safe places,” he said. “Relatively because missile strikes take place in the Lviv region and in many other remote cities.”
Popov’s younger brother volunteered for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“I am very worried,” he said.
Some female employees have gone to Poland.
“Our team is always in touch with each other,” Popov said. “We find out those who need help, material or moral support. Salaries are paid on time, taxes are paid.”
Ukrainian banks and fintechs are making contingency plans that would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago.
“All companies prepare women employees as potential backups at work in case men leave for the war,” Popov said.
Fuelfinance’s team members are mostly in the western part of the country now, Mysko said. Before the war, some were in Kyiv.
“During the first weeks, we were trying to understand how we can be saved, how we can communicate from other cities,” Mysko said. “It was crazy because we needed to communicate every hour to understand that everything is okay with everyone in our team. But we had this communication, even at night, so we understood that everyone was safe.”
One Fuelfinance employee joined the military three weeks ago. The company helped him get a car and other things he needed.
Keeping the wheels turning
Fuelfinance is trying to maintain business as usual, Mysko said.
“We have no choice because we understand that we have the war in our country, but we also should support the Ukrainian economy and we should support other businesses during this war,” she said. Half the company’s clients are Ukrainian businesses. The other half are in the U.S. and Europe.
“So we still need to do our work,” Mysko said. Fuelfinance’s software attempts to automate the work of chief financial officers and their staff.
“Before the war, we had a strategic session in our company and we had many plans,” Mysko said. “We had a plan to launch a new website on the day the war started. We were working till midnight to do everything. In the morning, our plans were changed.” The company pivoted to do more to help other Ukrainian businesses and assist with humanitarian fundraising.
“Now we’re coming back to all our plans because we have no choice and no time to stop,” Mysko said. “We started to work even more because we have our volunteer projects and also our work. Everything at one time.”
Some Ukrainian fintechs have had to pivot or shut down.
One fintech has “practically stopped the business because lending at high interest rates is not a wartime business,” Popov said. The company sent some of its IT staff on vacation at their own expense, while others had salary decreases.
The bank where Popov works now feels stable and reliable, as does Ukraine’s financial system, he said.
“We ensured the smooth operation of IT systems, the transfer of almost all personnel to remote work, the transfer of data centers to western regions or to the cloud in order to guarantee business continuity,” Popov said.
He noted that some Western technology companies have offered free use of their products and services for up to six months and have provided additional discounts, which has helped Ukrainian banks reduce some technology costs.
Ukraine’s three credit bureaus had to adjust quickly to war conditions.
The day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, Misha Esipov began reaching out to Ukraine’s credit bureaus to work with them to jointly help refugees establish credit in the U.S. Russian-born Esipov is CEO of the fintech Nova Credit, which translates credit reports from other countries into data that U.S. credit bureaus will accept and that lenders can use in credit decisions. Clients include American Express and SoFi.
“Obviously it's a difficult environment on the ground to conduct business right now,” Esipov said. “When we first reached out, within the first few days of the war breaking out, the response we got from one of the bureau CEOs was, ‘We love what you're doing, we appreciate the positive intent, right now we just don't have the team assembled to work on this. Give us a few weeks for things to settle down a bit.’ ”
One of the credit bureaus had to fully shut down its servers and move them to Western Ukraine.
“If you think about the substance of what is inside of these bureaus, it's basically the closest thing to a national database,” Esipov noted. “It is highly sensitive information on almost every adult in the country. So they've had to move their databases further away from the war zone on the Eastern front.”
Ukraine’s three credit bureaus cover close to 90% of the eligible adult population, which is close to the rate in the U.S. When and if one or more of the Ukrainian bureaus agree to work with Nova Credit, after the fintech goes through its vetting process, it will ask its U.S. clients if they want to turn on the credit reports from Ukraine.
Once customers like SoFi and American Express give the green light, any Ukrainian refugee who moves to the U.S. will be able to tap into their native credit bureau and use that information to unlock necessities like a credit card, a place to live, a cellphone, auto loans and student loans.
So far, President Biden has said he would allow 100,000 Ukrainian refugees to enter the U.S.
Helping others
When the war started, Fuelfinance set up a
“Before the war, they were simply restaurants and bars,” Mysko said. “Many businesses now make products needed for the war.”
Fuelfinance also launched a separate emergency page for Ukrainian small businesses to help them navigate the crisis.
At the bank where Popov works, some IT team members volunteer in their free time in various areas, including cybersecurity.
Ukrainians are hopeful about the outcome of this war.
“I think all Ukrainians have feelings of fighters,” Mysko said. “We are going to keep fighting and we all believe that we will win because we believe that we are in our country and we protect our country and Russians were not supposed to be here and they were not invited. Everyone is very proactive now in Ukraine. I believe that with such hard working people and such organization we’ll have results.”
Popov also believes Ukraine will win.
“We are ready for many hardships and losses in order to win,” he said. “It is often very hard from what we see and hear about the atrocities of the Russian army. But we are not ready for Putin's ultimatum and unreasonable demands and claims.”
Russia really does not understand Ukrainian people, he said.
“We are united now more than ever: in the store, on the street, among refugees, at home,” Popov said. “We help each other to endure this horror of war. Of course, we are greatly helped by the help and support of the democratic and civilized world: weapons, accepting refugees, financial support.”
