The Deposit Insurance Fund has 406 million euros and a 30,000-euro limit per saver - but it doesn't pay out while Alta Banka still has a licence

When a bank wobbles, every saver asks one thing: what if it disappears? The answer lies with the Deposit Insurance Fund, which currently holds 25 billion denars, or around 406.5 million euros. From that money, a single saver can get at most 30,000 euros in the denar equivalent.

But the key sentence for Alta Banka's clients in Bitola is a different one. The Fund pays nothing while the bank is operating. The mechanism only kicks in once the governor of the National Bank revokes the bank's licence. The National Bank has put Alta Banka under temporary administration and stresses that the bank is not bankrupt and has not lost its licence. Kiril Minoski, a guest on "Noćno studio", put it without decoration: a payout from the Fund is not possible while the bank is active.

What the limit covers, and what it doesn't

The 30,000-euro limit applies per saver and per bank, and it includes both principal and interest. If someone has 50,000 euros in a bank that loses its licence, the Fund covers 30,000, and for the remaining 20,000 the saver becomes a creditor waiting on the bankruptcy or liquidation estate - with no guarantee of getting it all back. Several accounts in one bank don't help: all of one person's deposits are added together and treated as one. Two different banks, on the other hand, mean two separate limits.

Denar and foreign-currency deposits, transaction accounts and card-linked deposits are insured. If the saver also has a loan with the bank, the deposit is reduced by the amount of the debt. And the payout isn't immediate: the Fund starts paying within 20 days of the licence revocation decision becoming final, with the possibility of extending that by at most another 10 days.

Bitola knows this story

The first savings insurance fund was set up in January 1997, with a limit of 7,500 German marks. Only a few months later, on 7 March 1997, the Bitola savings house TAT collapsed - more than 12,000 savers lost 120 million marks. Twenty-nine years later, the bank under administration is once again from Bitola. The difference is that today there is a fund with money and a clear limit - and that's exactly why it's worth knowing where that limit ends.

Minoski also recalled that there were initiatives to raise the limit to 50,000 euros, but they never happened. Today that sounds like a missed chance. Until then, the rule is simple and brutal: up to 30,000 euros, your money is safe if the bank goes under. Above that - you wait and hope. And while the bank is under administration, not even the Fund can help.