The Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency (Hanfa), the regulator overseeing assets worth as much as 111 billion euros, will be led for the next six years by the Management Board headed by President Ante Žigman. Žigman received parliamentary approval for his new six-year term at the beginning of February, but the entire process did not go smoothly. Namely, half of the members of the parliamentary Finance Committee, all from the opposition, opposed it, reminding of some controversial moves by Hanfa’s leadership.
How do you evaluate the past term and what would you highlight as the greatest achievement?
– The past term was quite successful. The most important thing we did was maintain financial stability and promote financial literacy. We have done a lot in this area, for example, with the legal provision that pension funds must educate the public. However, there is still work to be done. OECD reports show progress in Croatia regarding this, but these are not big leaps. Furthermore, it is very important that we have brought order to the operations of leasing companies. We had several major cases here. Regarding financial stability, during the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, together with the Croatian National Bank (HNB), we ensured the liquidity of investment funds, insurance companies, and leasing companies so that they could continue to operate. I am also proud that we liberalized investment in alternative investment funds (AIFs). When the Management Board started working, the system was very strict, and many of our companies were going to Luxembourg to open funds. We realized that the procedure here was complicated, and after that, the number of AIFs significantly increased. I would also highlight the improvement of the anti-money laundering system. When I came to Hanfa, it did not exist as an organizational unit at all. We established, equipped, recruited, and trained that department. Today we have a passing grade from Moneyval.
The past term was marked by a controversial move, the initiation of supervision at the AZ pension company after the pension funds failed to acquire a stake in Fortenova. Why did Hanfa initiate that supervision?
– This came across as controversial in public, but it was not because the supervision was planned back in late 2021. At that time, in late 2022, AZ was just coming up for review, and it was logical to extend the supervision to something that was then a topic in the public space, namely how the decision to invest in Fortenova was implemented, which at that time was not a sanctioned entity. And that was part of the general supervision, which does not seem controversial to me.
You say that the supervision was planned in advance. However, due to the timing, the impression was created that Hanfa was acting under political pressure. Is that correct?
– No, there has never been any political pressure for any supervision, nor for the supervision of the AZ pension company. No one at any time requested such a thing. At that time, it was an open question for us based on publicly available information what was happening there. In fact, it would be controversial to do the opposite, that Hanfa did not look into what was going on at all. I am convinced that the story, had we not done this, would have turned the other way: why didn’t Hanfa react?
