New Resolution No. 996 of the Board of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) dated 31 December 2015 (the Resolution) introduces some changes to the existing “anti-crisis” measures introduced by the NBU. Starting from 11 January 2016, loan agreements will be allowed to change, if such changes are related to the replacement of a creditor and/or a borrower; and/or it will be permitted to make amendments which allow the assignment and transfer of rights and obligations under the loan from a creditor-resident to a non-resident.

To prevent possible negative effects for the economy, a range of additional measures were introduced. Such measures include:

• Additional verification (performed by a servicing bank) of the client and a batch of documents which are submitted (and in certain cases are additionally requested by a bank) for registration of an agreement for the purpose of detecting financial operations which may end up in performing risk operations (if such operations may pose a threat to the depositors or other creditors of the bank). If the verification confirms characteristics of risk operations, the bank should reject the execution of the transaction and send the batch of documents to the NBU to register such agreement.
• An increase to the registration term of an agreement / respective amendments by NBU of up to seven working days (previously it was five working days.)
• In certain cases the NBU may conduct additional verification of the batch of documents which were provided to register the agreement. The term of such additional verification shall not exceed 30 calendar days and will not be included into the term for the registration of the agreement.

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