interest has almost tripled
“The balanced development and orientation towards quality carried out by Lietuvos bankas lead to the fact that more and more world-class financial companies start looking at Lithuania. This shows that by raising the FinTech sector to a higher level of quality, we become more interesting for investors and continue to be the most attractive jurisdictions in Europe,” says Lukas Jakubonis, Head of the Financial Market Development Center of the Bank of Lithuania.
The data of the novice program show that 224 institutions interested in the possibility of operating or seeking a license in Lithuania have applied to the Bank of Lithuania. This is almost three times more than last year. They were given 305 written consultations and held 75 meetings. in 2021 a total of 81 companies to the Bank of Lithuania, in 2020 – 108 companies. Most of the companies that applied were FinTech companies or start-ups, although, according to L. Jakubonis, the border between FinTech and traditional financial companies is gradually disappearing.
in 2022 November 30 according to the data, during this year the Bank of Lithuania issued 56 operating permits (granted a license or an entry in the list), according to this parameter we are still one of the countries issuing the most licenses in Europe. It can be seen that recently the interest in opportunities to operate in the investment services and credit markets is faster than the interest in the payments sector, there are the most participants and there is the greatest competition.
Lithuania continues to lead the European Union in terms of the number of electronic money – in our country there are as many as the institutions registered in Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Sweden and Germany combined. According to the Bank of Lithuania’s calculations, all financial institutions operating in our country serve about 25 million customers. Preliminary data for individual sectors for the three quarters of this year show growth in various directions.
The country’s central bank consolidated all functions related to the development of the financial sector into the Financial Market Development Center. Currently, 15 employees of the Bank of Lithuania participate in its activities, and its main task is to carry out balanced and sustainable development in the credit direction of the credit, capital, insurance and payments sector, by administering the New Program and to get involved in the support of the FinTech community that is already active in Lithuania.
The Financial Market Development Center estimates that this year it had a total of about 170 live meetings with various companies in the financial sector (not including New Program meetings), of which 36 were with commercial banks looking for new opportunities.