October the 2nd, 2026 – Croatian banks are holding some serious wealth, but inflation is continually eating it and reducing its purchasing power.
According to the Croatian National Bank (HNB), in June 2026, Croatian citizens held 33 billion euros in current and savings accounts, and an additional 10 billion euros in term deposits. Emilio Gucec reports for Poslovni that due to inflation, Croatians are losing around 430 euros of purchasing power per year on bank deposits, and the difference compared to investing after ten years can reach almost 10,000 euros per inhabitant.
This is a decline in purchasing power, not the disappearance of money from accounts: the nominal amount remains the same and, with interest, even grows slightly, but because of inflation less can be bought with it over time. Current and savings accounts in practice carry no interest, so with the latest published inflation of 4.2 % (August 2026) that part of the money loses value at the full rate of inflation. Shorter-term deposits currently yield 1.45 %, so the real loss on them is 2.75 % per year. According to a calculation by the investment platform Finax, this together means a loss of purchasing power of approximately 430 euros per year per inhabitant, or around 1.7 billion euros at the level of the entire country.
A similar picture was seen throughout 2025, when that loss amounted to around 360 euros per inhabitant, and it was particularly pronounced in 2022 and 2023, when inflation in Croatia reached 10.8 % and 8.4 % annually, which in just two years meant a real decline in the purchasing power of money in bank accounts of almost 20 %.
“Money held in current and savings accounts today practically carries no interest, so every month it quietly loses value at the full rate of inflation. When we translate that into figures, the average inhabitant of Croatia loses around 430 euros of purchasing power per year in this way, and at the level of the entire country it is almost 1.7 billion euros every year anew,” says Emilio Gučec, country manager of Finax for Croatia.
If the total of 43 billion euros that today lies in households’ current, savings and term accounts were invested in a globally diversified ETF portfolio with a historical average return of around 7 % per year, that amount could grow to around 84.6 billion euros in ten years. If everything remains as it is, the same amount in bank accounts would grow to only around 44.5 billion euros. The difference of almost 40 billion euros at the national level amounts to approximately 10,000 euros of lost potential value growth per inhabitant.
“A bank account provides many Croatians with a sense of security, but that same ‘security’ in the long term costs them the real value of their savings. The old saying goes: he who saves, has. But in today’s conditions, money that simply sits in a current or savings account without any interest quietly loses exactly what it was supposed to preserve, which is why it is suitable only for a short-term reserve, and not for the long-term building of assets. According to the HNB’s projection, according to which inflation should settle at around 2.8 % by 2028, such money could after about thirty years have less than half of its present purchasing power. With investing the exact opposite rule applies: compound interest works quietly, but from year to year more and more noticeably,” Gučec adds.
Inflation, he says, for years slowly and almost imperceptibly melts the savings deposited in banks, while compound interest in investing works in the completely opposite direction: it multiplies funds from year to year. And the longer the money remains invested, the stronger that effect is, while in a bank account time, on the contrary, works against it.
