Is my brokerage account protected in Europe?

Three separate things, and people tend to blur them together.

Segregation. Under EU rules an investment firm holds client assets for the client, not as its own property. Brokers do this in different ways: some register shares with a custodian in a client account, some use a separate legal entity created only to hold client securities. If the broker fails, those assets are outside the bankruptcy and the administrator's job is to return or transfer them. This is the protection that does almost all of the work, and it has no cap.

Investor compensation. A safety net for the rare case where segregation fails, through fraud, an administrative error or a gap in the records, and the firm cannot give back everything it held. The legal floor comes from the Investor Compensation Schemes Directive (97/9/EC), which requires each member state to cover at least €20,000 per investor and allows a country to limit the payout to 90% of the claim until that amount is reached.

Deposit guarantee. Uninvested cash that sits at a bank, including a broker that is itself a bank, falls under the deposit guarantee scheme instead, at €100,000 per person per bank. The German private banks' scheme, the EdB, states its limit as €100,000 per person and per bank regardless of the number of accounts.

Only when the firm has failed and cannot return what it held for you. The Dutch central bank is unusually clear about this on its investor compensation page: the bankruptcy trustee tries to return your assets first, and only if the trustee cannot do so can you claim from the scheme. DNB gives the example of a fund whose value fell through fraud; because the investor still held the fund units, the scheme did not apply.

Three things are excluded almost everywhere:

• Market losses. A share that halves, or a company that goes bust, is not a broker failure.
• Bad advice or poor investment management. Ireland's consumer regulator, the CCPC, lists these explicitly as outside the Irish scheme.
• Crypto-assets. DNB states there is no scheme for crypto service providers, so holdings such as Bitcoin are not covered.

The cap is also per investor per firm, not per account. CySEC describes it as the total of all covered claims against one firm, regardless of how many accounts you hold there.

The order of events is broadly the same across the EU. A court or regulator appoints a trustee or administrator, who takes control of the firm's records and works out which assets belong to clients. Segregated shares are then returned to clients or moved to another broker. During that period accounts are usually frozen, which is the practical cost most clients of a failed broker actually bear: weeks or months without being able to trade.

If the records show a shortfall, the scheme steps in. DNB says the trustee must try to return assets first, and that an investor whose holdings exceed €20,000 can file a claim with the trustee for the excess, though recovery is not certain and may take years. In Ireland, the ICCL says the administrator, not the scheme, assesses how much each client has lost. In France, the FGDR pays only after the ACPR, the banking supervisor, has found that the firm can no longer return or repay the missing securities.

So the realistic downside of a broker failure, for most clients, is delay rather than loss. The cap only decides the outcome for the slice of assets that the records cannot account for.

Most member states stay at the €20,000 floor. The figures below are taken from each country's scheme or regulator. Remember that the scheme follows the entity that holds your account: a German resident with a Cyprus entity is covered by the Cyprus fund, not the German one.

France stands out: the FGDR covers shares, bonds and fund units up to €70,000 per client and per institution, and only once securities have disappeared from the accounts and the firm can neither return nor repay them. The UK left the EU scheme framework, and its FSCS limit of £85,000 applies to firms that failed after April 2019. Our UK guide covers UK platforms and ISAs in detail.

DEGIRO is part of flatexDEGIRO Bank SE, which holds a German banking licence. On its investor protection help page, DEGIRO says the bank is primarily supervised by BaFin, the German financial regulator, while its Dutch branch is registered with DNB and supervised by the AFM and DNB.

How the shares are held: DEGIRO says it uses a separate legal entity, a special purpose vehicle, to keep client investments apart from its own. You remain the beneficial owner, and if the company became insolvent its creditors could not reach those assets.

The safety net: flatexDEGIRO Bank SE takes part in the German Investor Compensation Scheme. If segregated assets could not be returned, eligible clients would receive 90% of the loss on the missing assets, capped at €20,000 per customer. Cash in a DEGIRO cash account held with flatexDEGIRO Bank SE is covered separately by the German Deposit Guarantee Scheme up to €100,000 per customer.

Two limits DEGIRO states itself: crypto is not covered by the investor compensation scheme, and clients are not protected by the UK FSCS, even through its UK-facing site.

BUX is a Dutch broker. Its safety page says the investment services for shares and ETFs are provided by BUX B.V., registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and authorised and regulated by the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), with DNB named as a second supervisor.

BUX says asset segregation keeps client investments out of reach of seizure if the company goes bankrupt, and names ABN AMRO Clearing as the partner that holds client money and runs the system used to buy and sell shares.

On compensation, BUX says investments are protected up to €20,000 under the investor compensation scheme and deposits up to €100,000 under the deposit guarantee. That matches the Dutch rules: DNB caps the beleggerscompensatiestelsel at €20,000 per investor, or €40,000 combined for a joint account with a partner.

The protection above describes BUX B.V., the entity BUX names for its share and ETF service. If your statement names a different BUX company, check that company's licence before assuming the same limits apply.

eToro runs a group of regulated companies, and the one that holds your account decides your protection. Its regulation and licence page lists them. The ones that matter for a brokerage account:

For EEA clients the Cyprus fund pays the lower of 90% of covered claims or €20,000, according to CySEC. In practice that formula caps a €50,000 claim at €20,000, while a €10,000 claim returns €9,000. eToro's EU terms say the fund covers security trades, CFD trades and total return swaps, copied or not, and exclude cryptoasset trading, including crypto copy trades.

The same terms note that where eToro holds client funds with an eligible European bank, the bank's deposit guarantee scheme under Directive 2014/49/EU may apply (that directive sets the standard €100,000 level), separately from the investor compensation fund. Crypto trading gets neither: the terms say it has no access to the fund, to any deposit guarantee scheme, or to the Cyprus Financial Ombudsman.

1. Find the legal entity

Look at your account statement, the client agreement or the footer of the broker's site. It names the company you contracted with, such as flatexDEGIRO Bank SE, BUX B.V. or eToro (Europe) Ltd. That name, not the app's brand, decides everything below.

2. Look the firm up on the regulator's register

BaFin, the AFM, CySEC and the Central Bank of Ireland all publish public registers. Confirm the firm is authorised, and note whether it is a bank or an investment firm, because that decides whether its cash falls under the deposit guarantee.

3. Match the regulator to its compensation scheme

Use the table above: a Dutch licence means DNB's scheme, a Cyprus licence means the Cyprus fund, a German bank means the German scheme. Check the product too, since crypto and some derivatives sit outside it.

4. Compare your balance with the cap

The cap only bites in the rare case where segregation fails. Some investors with balances far above €20,000 split money across firms for that reason; others accept the risk, since segregation is the protection that normally returns client assets in full.

Walnut is an AI investing app. It never holds your money; your shares stay at the broker that already has them, under that broker's protection, so nothing about the schemes above changes when you connect.

DEGIRO, BUX and eToro connect to Walnut read-only. Walnut reads the account in full: every holding, how each one has done against the S&P 500, a keep, trim or exit read on each position, and an assistant that answers questions about what you actually own. Connecting does not give Walnut the ability to place orders at those brokers.

Where a broker accepts orders, Walnut can place the ones you approve, one by one, at Public and at Robinhood (through a Robinhood Agentic account, while the main Robinhood account stays view-only to outside apps). E*Trade, tastytrade, Webull (US and Canada), moomoo, Questrade, Wealthsimple, Trading 212 and Stake (Australia) also take orders you approve. Nothing is placed without your confirmation.

"My whole portfolio is insured to €20,000." The scheme only pays toward assets the firm fails to return. Segregated shares that come back to you are not a claim at all, whatever their value.

"I live in Germany, so the German scheme covers me." The scheme follows the firm's licence. An EEA client of eToro is covered by the Cyprus fund wherever they live.

"Cash and shares share one limit." At a bank broker such as DEGIRO, cash sits under the €100,000 deposit guarantee and securities under the investor scheme. They are separate limits.

"Crypto on a regulated app is protected like shares." DNB, DEGIRO and eToro each say crypto is outside investor compensation.

The EU floor is set by Directive 97/9/EC. Dutch limits and exclusions are from De Nederlandsche Bank; Irish limits from the Investor Compensation Company; Cyprus limits from CySEC; Irish exclusions from the CCPC; French limits from the FGDR; the UK limit from the FSCS; the German deposit limit from the EdB. Broker details are from DEGIRO, BUX and eToro. Walnut is not a registered investment adviser; this guide is educational and describes how the schemes work, not what to do with your account.