Headquarters | Tallinn |
---|---|
Established | 24 February 1919 |
Chairman | Ardo Hansson |
Central bank of | Estonia |
Reserves | ~236 Million € [1] |
Succeeded by | European Central Bank (2011)1 |
Website | www.eestipank.ee/en |
1 The Bank of Estonia still exists but many functions have been taken over by the ECB. |
The Bank of Estonia (Estonian: Eesti Pank) is the central bank of Estonia as well as a member of the Eurosystem organisation of euro area central banks.
The Bank of Estonia also belongs to the European System of Central Banks. Until 2010, the bank issued the former Estonian currency, the kroon.
The Governor of the Bank of Estonia, currently Ardo Hansson, is a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank.
Prior to the introduction of the euro, TALIBOR or the Tallinn Interbank Offered Rate was a daily reference rate based on the interest rates at which banks offer to lend unsecured funds to other banks in the Estonian wholesale money market (or interbank market in Estonian kroons. TALIBOR was published daily by the Bank of Estonia, together with TALIBID (Tallinn Interbank Bid Rate).
TALIBOR was calculated based on the quotes for different maturities provided by reference banks at about 11.00 am each business day by disregarding highest and lowest quotation and calculating arithmetic mean of the quotations.
The bank was established on 24 February 1919 by the provisional government of Estonia following the independence of Estonia. Two years later, Eesti Pank became a national bank and responsible for issuing the Estonian mark.
A new version of the Statutes was approved in 1927, according to which Eesti Pank became an independent note-issuing central bank with limited functions. The main tasks of the bank remained to guarantee the value of the money through currency circulation and through the arrangement and regulation of short-term credit volume. Through the sale of government securities, the bank became a true .