Draft:Nebojsa Zarkovic

Nebojsa (Spiro) Zarkovic PhD (born 1958) is a Serbian professor in the field of insurance.

Early life and education
Nebojsa Zarkovic was born in 1958 in the town of Zrenjanin, Serbia. He graduated from elementary and high school in Vrbas. After four years of study at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Economics, he was awarded the degree of Bachelor in Economics in 1981. The following year he began his career as a university lecturer, from the positions of junior assistant to assistant professor, on the subject Transportation, Forwarding and Insurance. Zarkovic was awarded his Master's Degree at the Faculty of Economics in Novi Sad in 1987. He wrote his doctoral thesis mainly at the St. Gallen University, where he was awarded a scholarship by the Swiss government. He received his PhD degree at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade in 1992.

Career
In 1993, Zarkovic entered the world of business. From 1996 to 2006, he was employed in the insurance industry, working as a development director with DDOR in Novi Sad. Throughout the period of his engagement in DDOR, he participated in professional trainings and conferences in Switzerland, USA, Poland and Spain.

In 2006 he went back to his university teaching career being employed at several private universities in Serbia and Montenegro and acquiring the title of Professor in Insurance. Between 2012 and 2015 Zarkovic held the position of Dean of the Faculty for Business Studies in Vrsac. As Dean of Faculty, he introduced the subject Selling Insurance to the university programme. This was the first time in this part of Europe that Selling Insurance appeared on a university curriculum.

During the period 2015-2023, he was given four consecutive mandates as the President of the Commission on Licensing Insurance Agents and Brokers at the National Bank of Serbia. He also taught licensing candidates from the beginning of that period. From 2015 Nebojsa Zarkovic was also given three consecutive mandates as an Independent Member of the Supervisory Board of the life insurance company Merkur Belgrade.

Works
Throughout his professional career, Zarkovic remained one of the most significant and proliferate writers in the field of insurance theory and practice, not only in Serbia but also in the region of ex-Yugoslav republics. Through more than 200 predominantly self-written professional and scientific papers in various insurance and financial magazines and other publications, he was frequently introducing innovative solutions for the problems faced by the insurance industry. For example, in Svet osiguranja (‘The World of Insurance’) monthly magazine, he published 55 articles, analysing numerous open questions concerning the domestic insurance market.

Initially he was a member of the editorial board, and then became Editor in Chief of DDOR magazine that was one of a very small number of magazines dealing with insurance in the Balkan region. He was a member of The Board of Editors of magazines Tokovi osiguranja (‘Insurance Trends’), Singidunum revija (‘Singidunum Review’), Evropska revija za pravo osiguranja (‘European Review of Insurance Law’). He was also appointed Deputy Editor in Chief of the magazine Finansije, bankarstvo, revizija, osiguranje (‘Finance, banking, audit, insurance’).

The following books may be cited as his most significant works: Economics for Insurance (2007), Basics of Insurance (2011 and 2015 editions), and Life Insurances (2011).

His most notable publication is undoubtedly Glossary of Insurance Terms, on which he has been working continuously since 1996. To date, three editions have been published – in 2002, 2013 and 2024. It is regarded as one of the most outstanding and comprehensive insurance books and a unique work of its kind in the Serbian language. The third edition of this book is 1,221 pages long, encompassing over 3,400 entries, which are translated into English and German and explained in Serbian.

In addition to these endeavours, in 2022 Zarkovic wrote a book on his section of the class - From II 6 to IV 5 (1974-1977) - The Best Vrbas High School Section of the Class.