Wealthy deposits grew faster in 2025

2026-04-29 22:44:00, Ekonomi CNA

Rich Albanians became even richer in 2025, while ordinary Albanians saw a negligible increase in savings held in the banking system, according to data reported by the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) in its annual report submitted to the Albanian Parliament. DIA is a public entity whose basic function is to collect an insurance payment from banks and savings associations and to guarantee the repayment of deposits in the event that any of the banks goes bankrupt. According to the law, deposits are guaranteed and repaid in full if they are lower than 2.5 million lekë and guaranteed and repaid at a lower percentage if they are above 2.5 million lekë.

Incidentally, this legal classification creates data that also speaks to the inequality in population savings, as the ASD reports the number of deposits and the amount of funds held in them below the 2.5 million lek limit and above this limit.

What has been observed in the data reported over the last five years is that funds held in deposits over 2.5 million lekë belong mostly to a small number of citizens, while funds held in deposits below this amount belong to the majority who have small deposits. The situation of inequality in deposits has worsened over these years.

Data for 2025 show that there were almost 138 thousand large deposits with an average value of almost 6 million lek each and 1.78 million small deposits with an average value of 319 thousand lek. In total, wealthy depositors have 820 billion lek in banks and their deposits increased by 10.8% over the past year. On the other hand, poor depositors had 568 billion lek together, with an increase of 6.4%.

Albania does not keep statistics to measure phenomena such as social inequality and therefore, this issue remains to be examined with data collected for other purposes, such as the case of deposits. In this case, we are talking about “number of deposits” and not “individuals”, since an individual can have more than one deposit, both in the case of large and small deposits. During the past year, the number of deposits where monetary values ??are found in the amount of 2.5 million lekë or in other currencies with this equivalent, increased to almost 138 thousand, with an increase of 9.2% compared to 2024. The number of deposits below 2.5 million lekë reached almost 1.78 million, with an increase of almost 4% compared to 2024.

The 138,000 accounts of the wealthy had an average balance of 6 million new lekë or over 60,000 euros, while the accounts of ordinary Albanians, 1.78 million, had an average balance of 320,000 lekë./Reporter