The conference on Croatia's financial literacy and role of insurers was held as an introduction to a series of events marking Global and European Money Week to be held from 14 to 18 March.
The president of the Grawe insurance company's board, Igor Pureta, presented the findings of a survey on measuring financial literacy conducted last year by the Croatian National Bank (HNB) and Hanfa, the national regulator of financial services.
There were two parameters: financial knowledge and behaviour, and the attitudes towards money.
The findings show that the median mark of Croatians' financial literacy was 11.7 points, while the best score may be 21 points. Those under 19 years of age have the lowest score of 9.3 points, while highly educated respondents scored 12.8 points on average, Pureta said.
Broken down by size of towns where respondents live, those in urban centres with over 100,000 inhabitants scored the highest mark, 13.1 points, according to the survey.
A comparison with Croatia's peers shows that Hungary had 69% of respondents deemed to be financially literate, while in Croatia this rate stands at 47%, as against 33% as the global average.
On the other hand, Croatia's life insurance market is less developed than those markets in other EU member-states, said Luka Matosic of the Uniqa insurer.
For instance, Slovenians spend on average 300 euros on life insurance annually, the average annual outlay for this purpose in Austria is EUR 800, and in Croatia it stands at 90 euros, Matosic said.
The Croatian Insurance Bureau was established in 1992 as the national Green Card Bureau of the Republic of Croatia.