The Croatian National Bank (HNB) on Tuesday released an updated list of systemically important financial institutions (SIFI) which continued to include seven commercial banks.

The seven banks are Zagrebacka Banka (ZABA), Privredna Banka Zagreb (PBZ), Erste&Steiermaerkische Bank (Erste), Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA), OTP Banka Hrvatska, Addiko Bank and Hrvatska Postanska Banka (HPB).

In 2016, the HNB started applying the criterion of the capital conservation buffer (CCoB), which is a certain percentage of a bank’s total exposures that needs to be met and its objective is to conserve a bank’s capital. When a bank breaches the buffer, automatic safeguards apply to limit the amount of dividend and bonus payments it can make.

The central bank applies a 2% rate of CCoB to five commercial lenders: ZABA, PBZ, Erste, RBA and OTP, while Addiko is subject to a CCoB rate of 1% and HPB is subject to 0.5%.

The 2% rate applied to the five banks remained the same as at the start of the year, whereas Addiko’s rate was reduced by one percentage point in comparison to the start of 2019 and HPB’s rate went up from 0.2% to 0.5%.