Hungarian banking group OTP Bank’s operations in Russia raise “legitimate questions” about its ​planned acquisition of the Baltic banking group, Luminor Bank, Lithuania’s central bank, the Bank of Lithuania, stated, Reuters reports. Earlier, OTP Bank announced that it had signed an agreement to buy Estonia-based Luminor. The Bank of Lithuania said that the European Central…
Lithuania’s insurance market totalled EUR 1.73bn in terms of premiums written in 2025, which was up 9.2% from 2024, according to data from the Bank of Lithuania, Baltic News reports. Non-life insurance premiums amounted to EUR 1.339bn (up 10.2%) and life insurance premiums to EUR 391mn (up 5.7%). Insurers paid a total of EUR 927mn…
Estonia’s central bank, the Bank of Estonia, has recommended that residents keep about a week’s worth of cash at home, ERR reports. Rainer Olt, head of payment and settlement systems at the Bank of Estonia, stressed that cash reserves were necessary in case of disruptions to electronic payment systems. Around 8% of Estonians prefer to…
Lithuania’s GDP will grow by 3.1% under a baseline scenario in 2026, according to the Bank of Lithuania’s latest forecast, ELTA reports. GDP growth will reach 2.0% in 2027 and 2.9% in 2028, the central bank projects. Under an adverse scenario, however, the country’s GDP growth will stand at 3.1% in 2026, at mere 1.6%…
Lithuania’s GDP will grow by 2.5% in 2025, according to the Bank of Lithuania’s latest forecast, ELTA reports. In September 2025, the central bank projected that the country’s economy would grow by 2.7% in 2025. The bank now expects the GDP to rise by 3.2% in 2026, by 2.3% in 2027, and by 3.0% in…
The EU should take on joint debt to finance defence spending, Gediminas Simkus, board chairman of the Bank of Lithuania, stated, BNS reports. Speaking in an interview with Politico, Simkus called for “more unity in defence” in the EU, noting that the European defence industry market was still very fragmented. He said that the “time…
US financial services company Robinhood has opened its first European cryptocurrency trading hub in Lithuania, investment promotion agency Invest Lithuania announced, BNS reports. The new Lithuanian-registered entity, Robinhood Europe, will offer crypto asset custody, administration, transfer, receipt, and transmission services in the European Economic Area. The Bank of Lithuania issued Robinhood an investment firm license…
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte has expressed scepticism about an idea to establish a state-run second-pillar pension fund, Baltic News Network reports. She noted that there was plenty of competition in the pension fund market, and that the activities of pension funds were well regulated. The problem was that there was not much choice on…
The finance ministers of the eight Nordic and Baltic countries as well as Poland have protested against the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) plan to resume missions to Russia, Euractiv reports. The nine EU ministers sent a joint letter to IMF director Kristalina Georgieva, warning that the decision to resume dialogue with an aggressor state would…
