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Project Information

This Financial Sector Note provides a snapshot of financial sector performance in Serbia – covering banks as well as non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) – and the progress achieved since the initiation of reforms in 2001. This assessment was designed to inform the World Bank and the Serbian authorities about the necessary next stages in financial sector reform. OPM staff provided the overall technical management of this project, working with specialists from the Belgrade and Washington offices of the World Bank. This involved the benchmarking of Serbian banking performance against that of comparator countries in the same region. It included a bank-by-bank review of performance based on various measures of efficiency and stability/capital adequacy in order to assess how the competitive processes were unwinding in the course of reform. This was interfaced with the exiting set of policy interventions (including the restructuring and privatisation of some major banks) in order to assess how those interventions will influence the performance of the banking sector in the years to come. The work also included preparing an outline of recommendations for future reform strategy for both banks and NBFIs.