Dušan Lalić, President of the FIC Financial Services Committee (Generali Osiguranje Srbija a.d.o.)

Simplifying and Digitalising Services in the Interest of Users

We wish to continue our excellent cooperation with representatives of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the National Bank of Serbia on the issue of the digitalisation of financial services, and to accelerate this process in accordance with European trends.

The FIC Financial Services Committee has been extremely active in the period behind us. As such, for example, we worked successfully on the initiative to digitalise financial services and enjoyed excellent cooperation with representatives of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the National Bank of Serbia, which allowed us to clarify many of the dilemmas that we’d had with regard to the interpreting of regulations. We also received responses from the National Bank of Serbia regarding our assertions included in the White Book, and their comments helped us form a clearer picture of the future direction of the implementation of our initiatives contained in the White Book. Moreover, success has also been achieved when it comes to specific initiatives, with the introduction of digital bills of exchange expected and electronic exchanges of data between banks and clients already enabled, as well as the electronic submitting of authorisations for the registration of leased vehicles. We are also optimistic when it comes to the implementing of other proposals that form part of the Initiative for the Digitalisation of Financial Services. We have also prepared an official initiative to amend the Law on Income Tax, the essence of which is the introduction of tax incentives for life insurance. We expect to soon sit with the Tax Administration and together discuss how best to introduce the aforementioned tax incentives. In addition to this, we are also working on the organising of an annual conference of the financial sector, with a plan to also initiate this project at the beginning of next year. In summarising the period that’s behind us, it should be noted that we also worked on compiling the White Book again this year, and that we introduced some other new initiatives.

Here we would single out several initiatives that we are working on actively, together with state bodies. One of them relates to the simplification of video identification, where we propose the simplifying of the entire process, in both a technical and regulatory sense, and for our regulations to follow changes in European regulations governing this area. New software solutions are being developed in Europe on a daily basis and have rendered the identification process fully digital and automated (with the human factor only included in exceptional cases). The advantage of such solutions is that they enable potential clients to complete all processes with a financial institution from home and without the need to visit said institution. The existence of this function would facilitate and accelerate the client access process compared to the current situation, given that the client would not have to converse with a representative of the financial institution, but rather the identification process would be carried out completely automatically. All in all, this initiative would contribute to improving the user experience significantly.

We expect to soon sit with the Tax Administration and together discuss how best to introduce tax incentives in the area of life insurance

Another extremely important initiative is represented by the simplifying of the printing of third-party motor liability insurance policies (MTPLs). This policy, which is an obligatory document in the process of registering a vehicle, must currently be printed on a special form and using a special printer. We propose that the regulation governing the vehicle registration process enable insurance companies to print MTPLs in the same way as is done in other areas of the economy.

Members of the committee once again participated actively in this year’s conference on personal data protection. As in previous years, open communication has continued with the Ministry of Justice and the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection.