Montenegro’s government has approved amendments to the Law on Financial Conglomerates, advancing regulatory changes aimed at bringing financial-sector supervision closer to European Union requirements. The proposed amendments are intended to strengthen supplementary supervision of groups combining banking, insurance and investment activities.
The legislation forms part of Montenegro’s alignment with EU Directive 2002/87/EC and is linked to accession negotiations under Chapter 9 on Financial Services. The amendments must still receive parliamentary approval and publication before they can enter into force. Under the proposed framework, supervision would increasingly address risks across financial groups rather than assessing regulated entities only on an individual basis.
Financial groups combining banks, insurers and investment firms can have exposures that are not fully reflected when each company is examined separately. EU rules therefore provide for supervision covering group capital adequacy, risk concentration, intra-group transactions, ownership structures and governance. The changes are particularly relevant for groups operating across multiple regulated sectors or countries. Montenegro’s banking system is dominated by foreign-owned institutions, with several banks belonging to larger European financial groups.
The banking sector remained profitable in the first half of 2026, recording combined earnings of about €64.5 million, although profits were approximately 11% lower than a year earlier. As Montenegro progresses towards EU accession, banks and other financial institutions are expected to face increasingly EU-aligned reporting, governance and supervisory requirements. For financial groups, the changes could raise compliance requirements while bringing domestic supervision closer to the regulatory frameworks applied to parent companies and subsidiaries elsewhere in Europe.
The legislation could also reinforce cooperation between the Central Bank of Montenegro and other domestic and foreign regulators where banking, insurance and securities businesses operate under the same ownership structure. The amendments do not change the ownership or operating models of Montenegro’s financial institutions, but would bring supervisory practices closer to those applied across the EU. For investors, the reform represents another step in regulatory convergence, as Montenegro works to demonstrate that EU financial-services rules can be incorporated into national legislation and effectively implemented by domestic regulators. Parliamentary approval would advance another outstanding financial-services requirement within Montenegro’s EU accession process.
