Financial markets and current events discussed
The Bank Association of Slovenia organized the regular annual conference for the treasury, custody, and investment banking industry. The conference was held on April 12 and 13, in Lev Hotel in Ljubljana and covered various topics and subjects related to financial markets and current events, such as an overview of macroeconomic and monetary policy on the EU level, artificial intelligence in the banking industry, ESG, and green transition. The most relevant topics discussed were the securities market agency, the Bank of Slovenia, and the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Slovenia.
Securities Market Agency
Regarding the regulatory news, there is a pending amendment to the Market in Financial Instruments Act, consisting of the Implementation of MiFID II amendments due to the Regulation of a pilot regime for market infrastructures based on distributed ledger technology (DLT MTF and DLT TSS) and Implementation of Directive 2004/109/ES, amended by the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). In the domain of FinTech, Regulation (EU) 2022/858 on a pilot regime for market infrastructures based on distributed ledger technology is applicable as of 23 March 2023, while there is a pending implementation of the regulation on Markets in Crypto assets (MiCA).
In terms of ESG, The Directive (EU) 2022/2464 as regards corporate sustainability reporting is applicable as of January 5, 2023, while “greenwashing” and “green bleaching” are seen as the main ESG challenges.
Bank of Slovenia
The recovery of GDP growth and the significant increase in inflation marked the macroeconomic environment in 2022.
As for the ECB monetary policy response, in July 2022 the first increase of ECB interest rates after 2011 was recorded. So far, a cumulative increase of interest rate by 3,5 percentage points has been documented, with further increases in interest rates expected
Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Slovenia
Concerning the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Slovenia, the topics discussed were monetary conditions and the SLOREP market, selection criteria for primary dealers and secondary market performance, and Securities lending facility.
