The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is the world's oldest international financial institution established as a shareholding company in 1930 with its head office in Basel, Switzerland. BIS's shareholding members are central banks. The BIS currently has 63 member central banks.
The mission of the BIS is to foster cooperation among central banks, serve central banks in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability and act as a bank for central banks. In addition to central banks, the BIS also provides banking services to international organisations. BIS analyses on monetary and financial stability issues and its broad range of statistics in the area of international banking and finance are of relevance to the general public.
The BIS contributes to the cooperation among central banks through its programme of international meetings, which include bimonthly meetings and by providing support to a number of committees, among which to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), the Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS) and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI). Furthermore, the BIS hosts the bodies with own legal personality, such as the Financial Stability Board (FSB), which was established in 2009 as the successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF). The FSB was established as a response to the global economic crisis and its role and activities are directed at strengthening the international financial stability and are characterised by the close cooperation with the IMF with regard to the system of Early Warning Exercises (EWE) concerning the probability of macroeconomic and financial risks.
The Croatian National Bank has been a member of the BIS since 1997. In mid-2001, when the issue of succession of the membership of the former National Bank of Yugoslavia (NBY) in the BIS was resolved, the Croatian National Bank received the shares in the amount of 28.49% of the shares of the former NBY.
Representatives of the CNB management take part in the work of the Annual General Meeting of the BIS, and the Governor of the CNB attends bimonthly meetings of central banks governors, at which a series of current topics from international banking and finance is discussed.