FINANCIAL AGENTS

Financial agents are defined in the provision of Article 6 of the Act on Financial Intermediation and Financial Counseling
1. A financial agent is a person having located its registered office or place of business or organizational unit in the territory of the Slovak Republic and pursuing financial intermediation upon a written contract concluded with a financial institution or upon a written contract concluded with an independent financial agent. The financial agent within the sector of insurance and reinsurance is a person with a registered seat or the main office in the territory of the Slovak Republic in the case of a legal person or a person having a permanent address and place of business in the territory of the Slovak Republic in the case of physical person.
The financial agent shall not be allowed to pursue financial counseling.
(2) Unless otherwise stipulated by Articles 11 and 12, financial intermediation may be pursued only by a financial agent being
a) an independent financial agent,
b) a bound financial agent,
c) a subordinate financial agent.
(3) The words “financial agent”, their translations into other languages, or the words or their translations, in which their etyma occur, may be included in a commercial name only by an entrepreneur authorized to pursue financial intermediation in accordance with this Act. Where any confusion may occur, the National Bank of Slovakia shall be entitled to require specification of the financial agent’s or another entrepreneur’s name, and the financial agent or another entrepreneur shall be obliged to accord such request.

4. A financial agent is entitled to pursue financial intermediation only for a financial institution authorized to perform the activity in the territory of the Slovak Republic

An independent financial agent may pursue financial intermediation through subordinate financial agents who on the basis of the contract with and upon his proposal registered in the Registry of the National Bank of Slovakia. In this registry the clients may according to the name and surname of an agent look up and verify if he has a license for financial intermediation as a subordinate financial agent. The entry into the registry is available on webpage:http://regfap.nbs.sk/zoznam.php

Bound financial agents may work only for financial institutions. These pursue financial intermediation with exclusive responsibility of the financial institutions they have the contracts concluded e. g. banks, insurance companies, brokers,  supplementary pension gfund, credit companies. Bound financial agents must also be registered in the registry of the National Bank of Slovakia and their licenses to pursue financial intermediation as a bound financial agent also can be verified on the web page:http://regfap.nbs.sk/zoznam.php

Financial agenst are registered in the registry of the National Bank of Slovakia  for the sectors which they have licenses to pursue  financial intermediation: Insusurance and reinsurance, capital market, receiving of deposits, granting credits, supplementary pension saving. In the event the financial agent is not registered in any of these sectors he has not a license to to pursue  financial intermediation of the products and services in this sector. For example building savings cannot be mediated to the citizen if a financial agent is not registered by the National Bank of Slovakia in the sectors of receiving deposits and granting credits.