He was born on October 13, 1956 in Sarajevo, BH, where he completed his elementary and high school education. He graduated from the Faculty of Economics, Marketing Department Sarajevo in 1981. He successfully defended his Master thesis "Perspectives of the Monetary Policy Model of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the Path towards the European Union" in September 2006, which promoted him into Master in Economics. At the same Faculty he defended Doctoral Dissertation on the subject "Impact of Credit Growth on the Economic Development of Transitional Countries", and thereby he acquired the academic degree of the Ph.D. in Economics on February 11, 2009. After completing his studies, he worked for 15 years in banking, and from 1996 until early 2000 he was the Minister of Finance in the Sarajevo Canton Government and after that he was appointed Vice Governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based on the Decision of the BH Presidency dated May 20, 2003, he was appointed member of the Governing Board of the CBBH and the BH Presidency also gave the consent that he could continue to perform his duties of the CBBH Vice Governor. As of January 1, 2005, he assumed the duties of the Governor of the CBBH and Chairman of the CBBH Governing Board. He has been re-appointed  to the CBBH Governing Board by the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 10 June 2009 and the Governing Board of the CBBH has re-appointed him for the Governor for the second mandate. In 2007 he has been appointed to the chairman position of the BH Deposit Insurance Agency Governing Board. Since 2005, Kemal Kozarić, Ph.D., has delivered many lectures at various faculties and academic gatherings and presented a number of papers at conferences abroad and in the country. In this period he has published a number of texts on actual subjects from the banking area and on modern trends in economy of BH and the region, published in professional magazines. He received numerous awards, among which are the award for successful conducting of stable monetary policy and award for the contribution to the keeping of stability of the banking sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina.