Bail-in Resilience Checklist for Individuals
- Zener Group
- Jan 21
- 2 min read
Personal assessment of savings protection against bail-in. 14 questions in 6 categories: limits and distribution, account types, high-risk products, geography, liquidity versus protection, and monitoring. Practical recommendations for individuals with exportable results.
Focus on personal financial security, compliance with deposit insurance limits (€100k), understanding the difference between account types, and avoiding high-risk banking products. Takes into account retail specifics and the need to balance liquidity and protection.
Who is it for
Individuals, private investors, deposit holders.
Result
Personal assessment with specific steps to protect personal savings: optimal distribution of deposits, choice of account types and strategy for monitoring banking risks.
Assessment system
High stability: 12-14 points
Average resilience: 7-11 points
Low resilience: 0-6 points
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 assessment system. A simple and intuitive system for quickly understanding the level of risk.
Practical recommendations. Each level of risk 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).
Recommendations for use
Complete the checklist honestly — there is no room for self-deception here
Save the results in PDF format to track your progress
Review your assessment every 3-6 months.
If your assessment is low, take immediate action.
If your assessment is high, don't relax, continue monitoring.
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.
