Are my savings safe in a branch of a foreign bank in Spain?

08/05/2025

Browsing the internet, watching TV or messing around on your mobile phone, you have surely missed advertising from financial institutions that are not familiar to you. Globalization also affects the financial sphere, and it is no longer uncommon to be a customer of a bank in another country.

There are many credit institutions that operate in Spain, but whose headquarters are located in another state, whether or not it is from the European Union. These entities can operate in the form of a branch in Spain, the most common, and depending on their country of origin they can be:

• Branches in Spain of community credit institutions. They can operate in Spain just by communicating the start of their activity, and are, for all purposes, like any other Spanish credit institution, which includes that the deposits are covered by the Deposit Guarantee Fund of the country of origin of the entity. The guarantee is the same as the one that covers a Spanish entity.
• Branches in Spain of non-EU credit institutions. They need prior authorization to carry out their activity in Spain. These types of institutions must be members of the Spanish Deposit Guarantee FundAbre en ventana nueva, unless they offer an equal or higher level of protection to depositors.

However, before deciding, consult the information on the different types of entities in our RegistryAbre en ventana nueva.

“Disclaimer: Please note that this is a translation of the original in Spanish that has been obtained using eTranslation (the machine translation tool provided by the European Commission), with the intention of giving you a basic idea of the content in English until a human translation becomes available. The Banco de España accepts no liability whatsoever in connection with this translation.”