The value of assets held by Croatian UCITS-compliant mutual funds totalled 26.7 billion kuna (€3.5 billion) in 2021, or 16.6 percent up from 2020, state agency Hina said on Friday, citing a press release sent to the media by the national chamber of commerce HGK.

UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) are mutual investment funds established in line with the UCITS Directive, the regulation on mutual funds in the European Union. The purpose of UCITS is to provide a single regulatory regime for open-ended investment funds across the European Union, and the rules regulate the structure of funds, their management and organization.

The head of the Croatian UCITS Funds Group, Hrvoje Krstulovic, was quoted as saying that the investment fund industry in Croatia professionally manages assets of their investors and has achieved returns of “more than 20 percent for equity funds.”

“An exciting journey towards sustainable investments has begun, which will be at the center of interest in the coming years. The range of funds offered is constantly expanding, and thus provides investors with an ever-increasing choice of instruments for long-term savings and investment on the capital market,” Hina quoted Krstulovic as saying in the press release sent by HGK.

“The investment fund industry provides people with a wider range of investments and savings compared to traditional instruments, and also helps develop the financial literacy of a society. As fund investments are necessarily influenced by global economic trends and political events, investing in funds automatically motivates people to follow events in the world more closely. In other words, it can indirectly help the general public to be better informed,” HGK’s chief economist, Goran Saravanja, said.

(€1 = 7.52 kuna)