The financial system of the Republic of Croatia consists of financial institutions, financial markets, the payment system and institutions that regulate and supervise the work of financial institutions. Financial institutions can be non-deposit and deposit or credit institutions that collect deposits and place them in the form of loans to businesses and citizens. Credit institutions in the Republic of Croatia are regulated by the Credit Institutions Act and the regulations of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Croatian National Bank (CNB), and as joint stock companies they are also subject to the regulations of the Companies Act. According to the Law on Credit Institutions, a credit institution based in the Republic of Croatia can be established as a bank, savings bank or housing savings bank. The organizational structure of banks is conditioned by the type of their operations, with the legally defined obligation to respect the principles of liquidity and solvency. The bodies of the credit institution are the general assembly, the supervisory board and the management. The general assembly decides on the business goals of the credit institution and entrusts the supervision of the business to the supervisory board. The supervisory board proposes the management, which manages the financial institution independently, under the supervision of the supervisory board. For the appointment to the position of president or member of the supervisory board and management, the prior consent of the European Central Bank (for significant credit institutions) or the Croatian National Bank (for less significant credit institutions) is required, which is preceded by a candidate suitability assessment procedure. Control of the operations of credit institutions is carried out through a system of internal controls within the institution itself, an external audit conducted by an authorized auditing company and supervision by the ECB for significant credit institutions and the CNB for less significant credit institutions. The process of determining the importance of credit institutions according to predefined criteria is carried out by the European Central Bank on an annual basis. Credit institutions are obliged to publicly publish and update data on their operations, while the ECB and CNB publish data on banks' operations on their websites. Data on the number of women and men in the management and supervisory boards of credit institutions in the Republic of Croatia indicate a significantly lower number of women in these positions. Data on the number of women and men in management boards and supervisory boards and in other EU countries are approximate values, which indicates a large room for improvement in this regard.