Deposit protection reformed: what EU Directive 2026/804 changes for your account

The most important news first: the €100,000 stays. The EU has revised its deposit protection rules, but it has not touched the coverage level per depositor and bank. What it has changed is much of what surrounds it: the protection of temporarily high balances, the safeguarding of client funds at payment and e-money institutions, the payout procedure and the cases in which a payout is stopped. None of this affects your account yet. Anyone planning their account structure for the coming years should still know the new rules.

The timetable

Directive (EU) 2026/804 was adopted on 30 March 2026, published in the Official Journal on 20 April and entered into force on the twentieth day after that, on 10 May 2026. It amends the existing deposit guarantee schemes directive 2014/49/EU and is part of a larger package that the European Commission runs under the abbreviation CMDI, for crisis management and deposit insurance. Parliament and Council had already reached political agreement on 26 June 2025. The same package includes changes to the bank resolution rules, which appeared in the Official Journal on the same day; how a bail-in works is explained separately. What the resolution side of the package means for deposits over €100,000 is explained in our piece on the bail-in reform 2026.

What matters for you is Article 3 of the directive. Member states must transpose the new rules into national law by 11 May 2028 and apply them from 11 May 2028, with some parts on preventive measures of the guarantee schemes only from 11 May 2029. Until then the existing national laws apply unchanged in Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Norway is in the EEA, not in the EU, and protects deposits up to NOK 2,000,000 under its own scheme; at the time of writing the EFTA database lists the directive as under scrutiny for incorporation into the EEA Agreement.

In parallel the European Banking Authority is working on the technical details. On 23 July 2026 the EBA launched four consultations, among them on the depositor information sheet and on the repayment of client funds. They run until 23 October 2026, and the EBA had scheduled a public hearing for 24 September. In total the EBA must draw up twelve such standards and guidelines. According to the authority, the reform bundles more than 100 practical improvements, many of them based on recommendations it made between 2019 and 2021.

New point one: high balances after a home sale

Anyone who sells their house or receives a larger insurance payout has considerably more than €100,000 in the account for a while. Until now member states had to protect such temporarily high balances beyond €100,000 for at least three and at most twelve months; how much was protected varied from country to country.

The directive harmonises this. In future such deposits are protected with at least €500,000 for six months on top of the €100,000, counted from the credit. For deposits from the sale of, or for the purchase of, a privately used residential property a ceiling of €2.5 million applies, provided the transaction has been completed or is about to be and you can prove it. What "short term" means is set by each member state. These figures are not final either: the Commission must review the coverage level and the amounts for high balances at least every five years and can then propose an adjustment.

You should know two restrictions. The burden of proof lies with you: you must show that the money comes from such an event. And for this part the guarantee scheme may take longer, up to 20 working days from receipt of all requested documents. Anyone handling a house purchase therefore keeps the sale contract and bank statements not just for the tax office.

New point two: client funds at payment and e-money institutions

This point affects everyone who keeps their money with a fintech without a banking licence. E-money institutions and payment institutions do not take deposits. They must safeguard their customers' money, and they often do so by placing it in segregated accounts at a bank. Until now deposits of financial institutions were in principle excluded from deposit protection, and the directive refers to exactly this in its recitals.

The new Article 8b changes that. Deposits made up of client funds will be covered if three conditions are met: the money is held in the name and on behalf of clients who would themselves be eligible, it sits in segregated accounts under the safeguarding rules of the relevant supervisory law, and the individual clients are known or identifiable before the bank fails. The €100,000 coverage then applies to each individual client, and the guarantee scheme pays either the institution for the benefit of the clients or the clients directly. In the recitals the legislator expressly names e-money institutions, payment institutions and investment firms.

Here lies the reform's most important limit, and it is easily overlooked. Your money is protected if the bank fails where your fintech has placed the client funds. If the fintech itself fails, deposit protection does not apply. Then the safeguarding rules for e-money and payment services continue to apply. The EBA must present the technical details, such as how clients are identified and double payouts prevented, by 11 May 2027. Why with every fintech the licence comes first is shown, using a large provider as the example, in Revolut as a foreign account: how safe is your money?

New point three: how payouts work

The payout deadline of seven working days now sits directly in the core article; the earlier transitional periods have been deleted. Amounts above €10,000 are, where possible, to be paid out by the guarantee schemes by credit transfer, not in cash, so that the money's route remains traceable.

Dormant accounts are newly regulated too. If there has been no transaction on an account for 24 months, the guarantee scheme may set a threshold below which it does not pay out of its own accord because of the administrative costs. On request it must compensate these depositors too. A forgotten savings book with a small balance therefore does not disappear, but you have to come forward yourself.

Anyone who still has no money after the payout deadline can in future lodge their claim with the guarantee scheme within five years, counted from the day on which the authority or the court determined that the bank had failed.

New point four: when there is no payout

Two new blocks are rarely mentioned in the debate on deposit protection. If a deposit is subject to EU sanctions, the guarantee scheme suspends the payout for as long as the measures apply; banks must flag such deposits in advance for this purpose. And if a depositor is charged with an offence in connection with money laundering or terrorist financing, the payout is suspended until judgment. Deposits from transactions for which someone has been convicted of money laundering remain entirely excluded, as before. For the account holder who does business legally this changes nothing, but it shows how closely deposit protection and anti-money laundering law are now intertwined.

New point five: more transparency on your statement

Banks must give you an information sheet on deposit protection before the contract is concluded, then whenever something changes and at least every five years. Among other things it must state the coverage level, the exclusions, the limit for joint accounts, the payout deadline, the currency of repayment and the responsible guarantee scheme together with its website. You are to confirm receipt of the sheet when the contract is concluded. Also new: your account statements will carry a confirmation that the funds are eligible deposits. That sounds like bureaucracy, but it is useful: in future you see at a glance whether a balance falls under deposit protection or not.

What the reform means for accounts outside the EU

For accounts outside the EU the directive contains two statements that are easily confused.

Branches of non-EU banks in the EU must in future belong to a guarantee scheme in the member state in which they operate. Any that do not yet belong to one on 11 May 2028 must join by 11 August 2028. That fits the second major EU reform for third-country banks, CRD VI, which we explain in your foreign account from 2027.

Conversely: depositors of branches that EU banks operate in third countries are in principle not protected by the EU schemes. A member state can only allow this by way of exception, if the bank pays contributions for it. Anyone holding an account at the branch of a European bank in Asia or America should therefore not count on the €100,000 from the EU but check the host country's protection.

For readers in the UK the directive changes nothing about their accounts at British banks. There the FSCS protects eligible deposits up to £120,000 per person and per authorised firm, and temporary high balances of up to £1.4 million for six months after life events such as a home sale. If you hold an account at a bank in the EU while living in the UK, the deposit protection of that EU state applies, and from May 2028 the new law with it. The same logic applies to Swiss banks: there esisuisse protects balances up to CHF 100,000 per client and bank under Swiss law, and the directive does not touch that.

Frequently asked questions

What this means for your account structure

The reform makes deposit protection more reliable in its details, but it does not shift the basic rule: €100,000 per person and per bank. Anyone with more spreads it across several institutions in different banking groups, or deliberately accepts that the amount above it is not protected in an emergency. Which limits apply in other countries and which criteria count beyond the coverage level is shown in our comparison of deposit guarantees worldwide.

Three practical conclusions follow already. Plan a property sale so that you can prove where the money comes from, even though the harmonised protection only applies from May 2028. With a fintech, distinguish clearly between the failure of the partner bank, against which deposit protection will help in future, and the failure of the provider itself, against which it does not. And keep an eye on dormant accounts, or close them if you do not need them.

Deposit protection is one half of the protection. The other is the question of which jurisdiction your money sits in and which rules apply there in a crisis. If you want to spread your assets across several banks and countries, talk to us in the free consultation. We show you which combination suits your situation, legal and clean for tax.