Bank of Lithuania

Legal and Licensing Department

Arūnas Raišutis, Director of the Legal and Licensing Department

The Legal and Licensing Department is responsible for:

  • Issue of operating licences
  • Performance of the procedures for the investigation of violations of legal acts regulating the financial market and the application of enforcement measures
  • Drawing up financial market legislation
  • Settlement of disputes between consumers and financial market participants

The objective of the Legal and Licensing Department is to apply law enforcement, legislative and financial market participant licensing tools, in order to ensure effective financial market supervision that complies with legal regulations and creates conditions for a sustainable development of the financial market, as well as to ensure efficient investigation and prevention of disputes between consumers and financial market participants.

The Department is responsible for the analysis of legislative initiatives concerning activities and supervision of financial market participants and for drawing up of legal acts in this area.

We investigate breaches of legal acts that regulate the financial market and are responsible for the procedures of the application of enforcement measures as well as for ensuring their proportionality and effectiveness.

Our task is to ensure that only transparent and reliable entities operate in the financial market. We do this by assessing the applications for licences that we receive and checking whether companies comply with the requirements set out in legal acts, as well as whether candidates for management positions at financial institutions are of impeccable reputation and meet the qualification and experience requirements laid down in legislation.

We are also responsible for the investigation and prevention of disputes between consumers and financial market participants arising from agreements on loans, deposits, insurance, payments, investment and other financial services. We actively cooperate with other Lithuanian institutions operating in the field of consumer protection. Moreover, the Bank of Lithuania is a member of the European Commission’s out-of-court financial dispute settlement network FIN-NET and maintains close relations with the country’s consumer protection associations.

The Department is comprised of five divisions: Financial Services Dispute Resolution Division, Law Enforcement Division, Legislation Division, Licensing Division, Licence Management Division.

Last update: 06-06-2024