Lietuvos bankas

Lietuvos bankas (Bank of Lithuania) is Lithuania's central bank and the national financial market supervisory authority, headquartered at Gedimino pr. 6 in Vilnius's Senamiestis (Old Town), on the city's main boulevard near the Seimas (Parliament) and the Government Palace. Established in 1922 and a member of the Eurosystem since Lithuania adopted the euro on 1 January 2015, Lietuvos bankas employs approximately 700 people including a substantial legal, regulatory, and supervisory division. As both central bank and financial supervisor (uniquely combining both functions in Lithuania), it oversees banks, insurance companies, pension funds, payment institutions, and — crucially — electronic money institutions (EMIs), having issued more EMI licences than any other EU member state, making Lithuania the EU's leading fintech hub by licence count. The legal department handles institutional law under Lietuvos banko įstatymas (Bank of Lithuania Act), banking supervision under Bankų įstatymas (Banking Act), insurance regulation, consumer and investor protection, AML/CFT supervision, sanctions compliance, and participation in ECB rulemaking. Lietuvos bankas also pioneered the regulatory sandbox (LBChain) for blockchain-based financial innovation and issued the world's first CBDC-related digital collector coin (LBCOIN) in 2020.