Bail-in Resilience Checklist for Businesses
- Zener Group
- Jan 21
- 2 min read
Professional assessment of business resilience to bail-in risks. Includes 19 questions across 7 categories: account structure, banking diversification, legal protection of assets, liquidity, investments, geography, and crisis preparedness. Traffic light assessment system with PDF export.
Focus on operational resilience, legal protection of corporate assets, continuity of payment operations and preparedness for crisis scenarios. Takes into account the specifics of corporate accounts, which often exceed deposit insurance limits.
Who is it for
Companies, entrepreneurs, financial directors.
Result
A detailed report with an assessment for each category, an overall score, and personalised recommendations for strengthening the company's financial architecture.
General principles
Bail-in resilience ≠ choosing a "good bank". Bail-in resilience is about the architecture of money storage, not finding a "reliable" bank.
Traffic light rating system. A simple and intuitive system for quickly understanding the level of risk.
Practical recommendations. Each risk level is accompanied by specific actions for improvement.
Export results. The ability to save a detailed report in PDF format for further analysis.
Based on real mechanisms. The checklists are created in accordance with current European legislation on bank resolution (BRRD).
Assessment system
High resilience: 17-19 points
Average stability: 11-16 points
Low stability: 0-10 points
Recommendations for use
Complete the checklist honestly — there is no place for self-deception here
Save the results in PDF format to track your progress
Review your assessment every 3-6 months.
If your score is low, take immediate action.
If your score is high, don't relax, continue to monitor.
The risk is not that a bail-in will necessarily happen.
The risk is that you may not be prepared for it.
Why is this important?
Since 2016, the European Union has had a bail-in mechanism in place — a procedure for restructuring troubled banks using funds from their depositors and creditors rather than from the state (bail-out). This means that in the event of a banking crisis, your deposits in excess of the insured amount may be written off or converted into shares in the troubled bank.
The bail-in mechanism was introduced after the 2008 financial crisis to shift the burden of bailing out banks from taxpayers to financial market participants themselves. In practice, this means that bank customers now bear direct financial responsibility for the stability of their financial institutions.
A striking example is the Credit Suisse crisis in 2023, when holders of $17 billion in AT1 subordinated bonds lost their entire investment overnight. This was the first large-scale application of the bail-in mechanism to a major European bank, which showed that the risk is real and not just theoretical.
It is important to understand that bail-in is not a question of "bad" or "good" banks. It is a question of the architecture of money storage. Even reliable banks can face systemic problems, and customers with undiversified assets will be at the greatest risk.
These checklists will help you assess the resilience of your financial structure to bail-in risks and take preventive measures to protect yourself.
