Transformation of the finance sector in Croatia

By the end of the Eighties, countries of the former Eastern Bloc overthrew their gov-ernments and began to reconstruct their economies, promoting private initiative and foreign investment. By now, some of these former Communist countries, for instance Poland, The Czech Republic, Hungary and several more, are already enjoying candi-date status for membership in the European Union.
In Southeast Europe, however, this development did not go without major conflicts: In 1991, war broke out, first between Slovenia and Croatia, both struggling for inde-pendence, on the one side and Serbia, trying to preserve the state Yugoslavia, on the other. A number of additional military controversies followed. Therefore, Croatia's transition from planned to market economy has been substantially hampered and delayed. In the past few years, however, this country has developed to one of the most promising in the region. This development did also benefit from political changes in the course of the elections early this year. The finance sector, and in particular the banking and insurance industries are believed to be of utmost importance for economic development. Therefore, the paper is intended to give a description of the status quo of the private insurance industry in this country and to develop a framework to estimate the future economic progress. The importance of this work is seen mainly in the rising interest of foreign enterprises to enter the Croatian market - not only in the insurance and banking sectors. In addition, the paper may contribute to the assessment of the economic development and political reliability of this country, which is of paramount importance for the whole region.
We designed three stage of analysis: First, economic development is treated on a general level, where we examine the transition processes in countries with similar economic and political conditions. Which conclusions can be drawn for the case of Croatia?