Smart collective bargaining in financial services in Serbia While the most developed EU countries, particularly Germany and the Nordic countries, are characterised by strong unions and large bargaining coverage in both the industry and services sectors, protection of collective rights in Serbia, as a candidate country, is still lagging behind. In spite of the long tradition of unionisation, primarily in industry, union density in Serbia has substantially decreased over time. The current situation in collective bargaining in Serbia is characterised by relatively strong unions and large bargaining coverage in the public sector, followed by large private sector companies, however, mainly operating in the manufacturing industry. Against such a backdrop, it is interesting to analyse the current state and possibilities for further development of collective bargaining in the growing services sector in Serbia. This chapter thus focuses on financial services, whose share in the total employment in Serbia is rather small (around 2%), yet is dominated by private companies, many of which include large international market players providing banking and insurance services. The two biggest sub-sectors in financial services in Serbia include NACE 64 (financial service activities, except insurance and pension funding) and NACE 65 (Insurance, reinsurance and pension funding, except compulsory social security). Taken together, these two sub-sectors in 2023 employed as many as 86% of all registered employees in financial services. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to compare the current state of collective bargaining between the two, as well as to discuss the potential for implementing the novel idea of smart collective bargaining. The proposed new approach in collective bargaining should better fit the needs of both parties (employers and employees) in the changing working environment affected by innovative practices such are digitalisation and innovative work arrangements. This research has been conducted as part of BARSERVICE Project No. 101126532, funded by the European Commission - SOCPL-2022-IND-REL-01 Ognjanov, Galjina Arandarenko, Mihail Aleksić, Dragan M. https://phaidrabg.bg.ac.rs/o:36300 cobiss:170427401 ISBN: 978-86-403-1879-2 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Key words: financial servies, Serbia, employment, industria, bargaining, financial sector 2025 Innovations in insurance : from traditional to modern market startpage: 315 endpage: 330 University of Belgrade, Faculty of economics and business, Publishing centre eng application/pdf 322602 bytes info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart