Leaving savings untouched carries a real cost, and fresh data now quantifies just how steep that price has become.
Revolut unveiled its European Wealth Drain Index last week, drawing on a survey of 20,007 adults across 20 member states alongside official deposit and inflation figures. The result is a portrait of a continent whose households are steadily growing poorer simply by keeping their money where it is.
Across 12 of the 20 markets studied, average one-year deposit rates fall short of inflation.
Overall, deposits yield an average of 2.76% against inflation of 2.94%, which means that even those who lock their money away are losing purchasing power in real terms.
Inertia, Confusion and App Fatigue
The true opportunity cost goes beyond the inflation gap alone.
Measured against the MSCI Europe ETF’s ten-year annualised return of 9.06%, Revolut estimates that households forgo an average of €638 for every €10,000 held in cash each year.
Scaled across the €6.3 trillion in question, that amounts to €422 billion annually in growth capital that never reaches European businesses.
Three factors explain why savers stay put.
Two-thirds have never switched banks for a better rate; 26% say they simply prefer their existing provider, 18% consider the difference negligible, and 15% do not know where to look.
Nearly half — 46% — misjudge their inflation-adjusted returns, and 19% are unaware that inflation affects their cash at all. More than half use multiple financial apps, and among those, 45% say the fragmentation actively discourages investing.
Compounding the problem, one in five Europeans has no savings whatsoever.
If inertia runs this deep, the obvious question is whether better products can overcome it or whether something more decisive is required, along the lines of the automatic enrolment that has boosted pension participation.
Rolandas Juteika, Revolut’s head of wealth and trading, rejects that approach.
His company, which serves more than 80 million customers, has a clear commercial stake in the answer, as it markets the investment products the research recommends Europeans adopt. Revolut reports that active EU retail investors on its platform grew 56% year on year.
Among those who do not invest, perceived risk was the main barrier for 29% and a lack of knowledge for 27%.
“Forced enrolment doesn’t tackle the root causes of inertia: perceived risk (29%) and a lack of knowledge (27%),” Juteika told Euronews, adding that “with our median first-time EU investment at just €18, we see firsthand that lowering the barrier to €1 naturally empowers consumers to act.”
Asked whether folding banking, savings and investing into a single app genuinely reduces fragmentation or simply relocates it, Juteika argued the distinction is structural.
Consolidating those functions “removes the administrative wall between a person’s salary, savings and capital markets,” he said.
A Continent Divided Three Ways
The regional patterns are striking.
Central and eastern Europe faces the widest gaps between inflation and deposit rates, led by Bulgaria at 2.3%, Slovakia at 1.7% and Lithuania at 1.3%. Yet appetite for investing small sums is highest there, with 51% of respondents in both Bulgaria and Romania willing to start.
Western and southern Europe holds the largest pools of idle cash, with Germany at €1.9 trillion and France at €588 billion, and faces an opportunity gap of 6% to 7%.
Northern Europe has deposit rates that broadly match inflation but the weakest awareness, with fewer than 40% of respondents in Denmark and Sweden understanding how inflation affects long-term wealth.
Brussels Wants the Same Money Put to Work
The findings arrive amid an active political debate.
Addressing French business leaders in Paris last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made almost identical points, framing idle deposits as a problem of European competitiveness rather than personal finance.
“In Europe, there is no shortage of technology or savings,” von der Leyen declared, adding that “there is still a shortage of capacity to scale up Europe’s businesses.”
Companies that begin in Europe too often leave to find funding, she said, shifting their centre of gravity or being acquired outright.
“Europe has savings. And unfortunately, those savings are sitting idle,” she continued.
“Today, €10 trillion in household savings are kept in bank accounts. And a large share of Europe’s savings is invested outside our continent. Europe now needs to put these savings to work for its companies. This is the goal of the Savings and Investments Union.”
The Commission’s €10 trillion and Revolut’s €6.3 trillion measure different things.
The Commission figure covers household savings held in bank accounts across the whole EU, while Revolut counts only liquid deposits in the 20 markets it surveyed, which excludes seven member states.
The arithmetic behind Brussels’ interest is straightforward.
The Draghi report placed Europe’s additional investment needs at €750 billion to €800 billion a year by 2030 to fund digitalisation, energy, defence and infrastructure — a sum member states cannot raise through borrowing alone.
Public debt stood at 82.9% of EU GDP in the first quarter of this year and 88.9% across the eurozone, according to Eurostat. If the money is not coming from governments, it must come from somewhere else.
The Savings and Investments Union, adopted as a strategy in March 2025 and overseen by Financial Services Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque, is the vehicle.
It is not a mechanism for touching anyone’s deposits and confers no power to do so.
Instead it works through incentives and infrastructure: a recommendation on savings and investment accounts giving retail savers a simple route into capital markets, a review of the pan-European pension product on which the Council agreed a position in June, rules on securitisation, changes to how banks and insurers can invest, and deeper supervision.
“Together, these measures could unlock up to €470 billion in additional investment,” von der Leyen said.
Juteika supports the effort but sees a missing piece.
“It’s important that the EU can rely on a unified single market driven by open banking and open finance principles, allowing citizens to see their full financial picture, benefit from innovation, and move capital seamlessly,” he told Euronews, adding that “while policy catches up, we’re already bridging this gap across all 27 member states.”
Not everyone is comfortable. Critics argue that a Commission facing this scale of funding gap has an obvious interest in influencing where household money ends up, and that harmonised supervision concentrates authority in Brussels over decisions previously left to national regulators and individual savers.
The timetable is tight, and von der Leyen has already signalled she will not wait for everyone.
“We now need to reach an agreement, before the end of the year, ideally with all 27 Member States. But if that doesn’t work, if necessary we will do it with those that are ready,” she declared.
