The effective functioning of the banking sector has a key impact on the stability of economic growth. The study is aimed at monitoring the banking sector development and identifying causality between the banking sector and economic growth. The methodological tools of the research are Principal component analysis, causal relationship, and vector regression modeling. The empirical study is based on the World Bank databank by eight components (for integral analysis) and seven indicators (for causality analysis). The study presents an improved algorithm for monitoring the level of banking sector development based on calculating the integral coefficient. According to assessment, the level of banking sector development and realization of its potential in Ukraine is low and significantly inferior to the EU countries; in 2000–2019, the development of the banking sector in Ukraine was 0.061-0.153. The results obtained confirmed the large discrepancy in the development of Ukraine’s banking sector with some EU countries (the highest lag values were observed with the Czech Republic and Poland). The causality analysis revealed a strong favorable relationship between the level of development of the banking sector in Ukraine and GDP per capita (0.796), a moderate one – with foreign direct investment (0.400), and a reverse relationship with the level of national poverty (0.678). This study is of practical value for identifying two possible trajectories of a country’s development, namely, sustainable development and economic turbulence, and has allowed forming a conceptual vision of the role of the banking sector in achieving social and economic goals.