Investor compensation in Greece — €30,000, and what it does not cover

If a Greek bank or investment firm can’t return the money or securities it was holding for you, you’re compensated up to €30,000 per investor. This is separate from the €100,000 deposit guarantee — and crucially it covers the firm failing to return your assets, not your investments falling in value.

What it is

a scheme — run by TEKE for banks, and by an HCMC-supervised arrangement for investment firms — that pays up to €30,000 per investor, per institution if the firm cannot give back the cash or financial instruments it held for you in the course of covered investment services (custody, executing orders, and so on). The cap is for your total investment-service claim, regardless of how many accounts you have there.

What it is NOT

it is not investment-loss insurance. If your shares or fund fall in value, nothing is owed — that’s normal market risk. The scheme only triggers when the firm fails to return assets through insolvency, fraud or misappropriation.

Your first-line protection — segregation

under EU rules (MiFID II), investment firms must keep client assets separate from their own. In an insolvency, properly verified client assets are kept apart and don’t form part of the firm’s estate — so the €30,000 scheme is a backstop, not the only thing standing between you and a loss.

Brokers and the home-country rule

a broker licensed in Greece (by the HCMC) falls under this €30,000 cover. But many brokers serving Greek clients are EU-passported from another country — those clients fall under the broker’s home-country compensation scheme (for example Cyprus’s ICF for a CySEC-licensed broker), not the Greek one. Know where your broker is licensed.

How not to get cheated

two things to internalise — (1) “compensation” covers the firm failing, not your bets failing; (2) the cap and the scheme depend on which country licensed the firm. Always check the licence and scheme before funding an investment account — see how to verify a provider. A “guaranteed high return” is never covered by any of this; it’s a red flag.

deposit guarantee (€100k) · safeguarded ≠ guaranteed · verify a provider · who supervises your money

This is general information, not investment advice. Scheme figures and scope can change — confirm at teke.gr and hcmc.gr. WTP Finance is informational only.

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