2012-03-15
The Supervision Service was authorized to solve independently certain financial market supervision issues
The Board of the Bank of Lithuania authorized the Supervision Service and its two departments to solve according to their competence certain financial institutions supervision issues. Such possibilities are provided by the Law on the Bank of Lithuania.
The Supervision Service of the Bank of Lithuania was authorized to apply enforcement measures provided by the laws, to issue instructions and obligations, to apply prohibitions and other measures to the supervised financial market participants, with the exception of banks, the Central Credit Union of Lithuania, insurance undertakings, branches of foreign banks and insurance undertakings established in the Republic of Lithuania.
The Supervision Service was also authorized to solve issues related to the issue of licences, permissions, consents, approvals, non-objections, suspension of their validity, cancellation of the suspension of their validity and their revocation (cancellation of validity), with the exception of some cases.
The Prudential Supervision Department of the Supervision Service of the Bank of Lithuania will be entitled to issue permissions to register amendments to the articles of association (regulations) of supervised financial market participants (to approve amendments to the articles of association, to coordinate them), with the exception of issuing permissions to register amendments to the articles of association concerning the size of the authorised capital. The Prudential Supervision Department will also issue permissions to elect or appoint the managers of supervised financial market participants (with the exception of banks, the Central Credit Union of Lithuania, insurance undertakings, branches of foreign banks and insurance undertakings). The Supervision Service will be entitled to cancel these permissions.
The Board of the Bank of Lithuania authorized the Financial Services and Markets Supervision Department of the Supervision Service to solve issues related to the issue of financial broker licences and their termination, including the decisions on suitability of a person’s qualification to perform the functions of a financial broker. The Department will also solve the issues related to the inclusion of natural persons in the list of insurance brokers or exclusion from this list, issue of insurance broker certificates and their temporary suspension, advance coordination of the content and form of advertisements of pension accumulation activity.
The resolution of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania will not be applicable when conducting the oversight of the operators of payment and securities settlement systems and performing other functions assigned to the Bank of Lithuania by the Law on Settlement Finality in Payment and Securities Settlement Systems.
Taking into consideration the authorizations granted to the Supervision Service, the resolutions of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, which directly provided that certain issued related to the supervision of credit institutions and other entities should be solved only by the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, were amended accordingly.
According to today’s resolution, the Board of the Bank of Lithuania will continue to deal with the main issues related to the licensing of financial market participants, enforcement measures applicable to banks, the Central Credit Union of Lithuania, insurance undertakings, branches of foreign banks and insurance undertakings and other key issues related to the financial markets supervision. It was also established that the Board of the Bank of Lithuania will retain the right to solve any issue to be solved by structural units of the Bank of Lithuania.
A new unit of the Bank of Lithuania, the Supervision Service, which started its operation in the beginning of this year, supervises commercial banks and other credit and payment institutions, securities and insurance markets, and investigates disputes between consumers and financial institutions. Up to now, these functions were performed by the liquidated Securities Commission and Insurance Supervisory Commission, as well as the Credit Institutions Supervision Department of the Bank of Lithuania. The State Consumer Rights Protection Service and the Insurance Supervisory Commission were responsible for the investigation of the disputes between consumers and financial institutions.