The Ukrainian banking sector has faced an unexpected trend: in June 2026, the share of non-performing loans (NPLs) rose for the first time in the last three years. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, as of June 1, the indicator of problematic debt reached 12.8%, increasing by 0.2 percentage points compared to the previous month.
This growth is occurring against the backdrop of active expansion of lending to both the population and businesses. During the first five months of 2026, the gross loan portfolio of the banking system grew by 8.4% and amounted to 1.474 trillion hryvnias. The regulator links the current situation to two main factors: the natural increase in the volume of issued loans and the tightening of approaches to borrower assessment.
End of the Decline Period
Until June 2026, the NPL share demonstrated an almost continuous decline since 2023. A particularly significant reduction in problematic assets was recorded at the end of 2025, when state banks conducted a large-scale cleanup of portfolios, writing off a significant volume of old debts accumulated after the banking crisis of the previous decade.
Nevertheless, even against the backdrop of the overall improvement in portfolio quality, financial institutions continue active work with debtors. According to Opendatabot, only during 2025, Ukrainian banks initiated tens of thousands of court proceedings for the recovery of problematic debt.
New Borrower Assessment Standards
In the context of growing lending, banks are strengthening risk assessment and relying increasingly on complex scoring models. As noted by the Ukrainian Credit Bureau, modern analysis algorithms go far beyond the simple recording of payment arrears.
Scoring systems now take into account a complex of behavioral characteristics of the client:
- Level of current credit burden;
- Number of applications submitted for new loans;
- Structure of existing debt;
- History of interaction with financial institutions.
The press service of PUMB confirmed this trend, explaining that when making a decision on granting a loan, the bank conducts a comprehensive analysis of the financial profile. Key factors become not only the presence of debts but also the level of income stability, current debt burden, and the overall credit discipline of the borrower.
Thus, the market is moving towards stricter verification standards, which likely reflected in the statistics of non-performing loans in early summer 2026.
