Ukrainbank credit co-operatives

Ukrainbank credit co-operatives (Українбанк). Ukrainian second-level credit co-operatives in interwar Galicia. Set up in county centers, they served as savings and loan associations for urban residents and community organizations and provided support for the Raiffeisen credit co-operatives in the countryside. The central co-ordinating body for these county credit associations was Tsentrobank. By the end of the 1930s there were 115 Ukrainbank associations, in almost every major town in Galicia. Most of them were small; only 25 had an operating capital of 100,000 zlotys. In 1937 their total deposits came to just over 4.6 million zlotys. The typical loan was 300 to 500 zlotys. A major obstacle to their growth was their exclusion from Polish state banks' credit. Ukrainbank offices were closed down by the Soviet authorities in 1939. Seventy-one of them were reopened under the German occupation (1941–4).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]