The Bank of Lithuania has updated its Financial Market Supervision Policy, which entered into force on 1 January 2025, setting out refreshed supervisory principles aligned with international practices and recommendations and placing greater emphasis on the quality of services provided to consumers and sustained dialogue with supervised financial market participants. The policy reinforces a risk-based supervision model across all supervisory activities and identifies anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) supervision as a distinct area alongside prudential and financial services supervision. It outlines how the central bank will support compliance through clearer explanations of requirements, advance communication of supervisory priorities and scheduled inspections, articulation of supervisory expectations, sharing of good and bad practices, and consultation on legislative initiatives, alongside advice and training programmes that attracted over 4,200 participants. It also elaborates on consumer-oriented supervisory expectations, enforcement measures calibrated to the nature of violations, the use of settlement (administrative) agreements that came into force in November, and licensing as the first stage of supervision to ensure market entry by reliable, transparent and financially capable firms with competent, reputable managers. The policy reiterates a technologically neutral approach to innovation, requiring new products and services to comply with existing financial and capital markets rules regardless of the technology used, while signalling further use of digital solutions to improve efficiency and reduce administrative burden.

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