MarketFinance pre-pays Russian staff ahead of financial cut-off

As the Western world closes its doors on Russia, SME lender MarketFinance has ensured its staff in the country aren’t left stranded without income by opting to make pre-payments to Russian employees for their salaries up to the end of May 2022.

“I am shocked and saddened by the terrible events in Ukraine right now, and there can be no excuse for war,” said Anil Stocker, CEO and co-founder of MarketFinance on LinkedIn on Sunday.

“Talking to our team members who are based in Russia, it’s clear this war is not supported by the Russian people, who are now suffering huge economic uncertainty as their country is cut off from the world.”

With a Russian co-founder and non-exec director, Ilya Kondrashov, the London and Manchester based fintech has a number of employees working in Russia who are likely to be impacted as financial inflows to the country are systematically halted.

“On Friday we made the decision to pre-pay all salaries to MarketFinance employees in all the affected regions until the end of May 2022 so that any disruptions to the banking or payment systems don’t impact them. We hope to at least give our team one less thing to worry about in these difficult times."