Mr. Ferdinand Kopp, Acting Head of Operations Section of the European Commission Delegation to BiH addressed the participants of the Regional Conference on Insurance Markets in South East and Central Europe and their Regulation today in Sarajevo. The conference is hosted by the Insurance Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and co-sponsored by the European Union funded Twinning Light Project “Support to the Insurance Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina” which is implemented with the assistance of the Bulgarian Financial Supervision Commission (FSC).
Mr. Kopp stressed the commitment of the European Commission to assist further harmonisation and strengthening of the insurance sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a part of the European Aquis Communitaire in the field of the freedom of services in preparation of BiH accession to the EU and taking part in EU insurance market. “For that purpose, we have elaborated together with the Agency for Insurance of Bosnia and Herzegovina a project for further assistance to the Insurance Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the two entity insurance agencies to be financed under IPA 2007”, announced Mr. Kopp
Director of the BiH Insurance Agency, Mr. Samir Omerhodžić reminded participants that the establishment of a single insurance market was a key activity of the Agency in 2007. As one of the direct results of this project, Mr. Omerhodžić mentioned the Tables of Transposition – a document where the degree of harmonization of entity legislative framework with EU conditions in insurance sector was evaluated. Talking about future activities, he announced that Agency would propose the amendment to the Insurance Agency Law with aim to remove current obstacles that would lead to more efficient and successful work of the Insurance Agency of BiH.
Chairman of FSC Bulgaria, Mr. Apostol Apostolov expressed his belief that this Conference would be very interesting and productive because all countries in the region were dealing with similar issues and this was opportunity to share the experiences and to discuss the solutions.
The Conference is attended by numerous guests from across the region as well as the European Commission and international insurance institutions.
This Conference also marked the end of the successful Twinning Light Project which aimed to contribute to the development of a single insurance market in BiH, to ensure efficient and transparent insurance regulation, monitoring and coordination, arbitration, transparent information sharing and reporting.
The European Union supported this project under CARDS 2006 with 250,000 Euro.
