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Blog · Personal finance

Your €10,000 in the bank:
you get zero, the banks break records

Over €30 billion of household savings sits in current accounts at almost 0% interest. At the same time, banks in Croatia are breaking profit records. Where does that return go — and what can you do with your own money?

24 July 20265 min readSources: CNB · ECB · CBS

Open your banking app and look at the balance. For most people in Croatia there are a few thousand euros sitting in a current or giro account — money kept just in case, for security. It feels good: the money is "safe". But while it sits there, that money does absolutely nothing for you — and does very well for somebody else.

ProblemYour money is asleep. Literally.

The average resident of Croatia holds about €10,700 in a bank. The bulk of household savings — nearly €32 billion — sits in current and giro (overnight) accounts. Interest on those accounts is effectively zero: on the order of 0.2%, and even less on pure transaction accounts.1

In other words: your €10,000, after a year in a current account, earns you — a few euros. With inflation, in real terms it loses value every month.

ProblemBut that money is working somewhere — for the bank

The bank does not keep your deposit in a vault. It lends out most of it, and can simply park excess liquidity at the central bank. That is where the catch is: while the European Central Bank (ECB) paid banks up to 4.00% a year on that parked excess (from September 2023 to June 2024),2 the banks paid you about 0.2% on the very same money in your account.3

The bank keeps the difference of almost four percentage points. What does that amount to? In 2024 alone the Croatian National Bank paid banks over €530 million in interest on overnight deposits — money earned by parking excess liquidity, without a single loan being approved.4

"You get ~0%. The bank gets the return. Legal and normal — but it is your money doing the work, while someone else takes the reward."

ProblemThe scale: this is not pocket change

Multiply your few thousand euros by everyone in Croatia and you get numbers that change your perspective:

~€32bn
of household savings in overnight accounts — at ~0% interest
€1.53bn
record bank profits in Croatia (2024)5
16.4%
return on bank equity (ROE) — while your account earns zero

To put that €1.53 billion in context: it is roughly 75% of the entire Croatian general government deficit for 2024 (about €2.0bn).6 The banks alone, then, earned the equivalent of three quarters of the state's annual shortfall. And since around 90% of the banking sector is foreign-owned, most of that profit leaves the country as dividends.5

None of this is a conspiracy theory — these are publicly published rates and figures from the ECB, the Croatian National Bank and the Croatian Bureau of Statistics. The system works exactly as designed. The only question is: why should you be its source rather than its beneficiary?

SolutionWhat if your euro did what the bank's euro does?

You can apply the same logic the bank uses on your money yourself — except the return goes to you. Instead of the bank deploying your liquidity and keeping the earnings, you deploy it, through an open protocol on a blockchain, and the yield is yours.

The engine that does it is called Hobba — an audited protocol on Solana that deploys your asset into vetted yield vaults (Perena, Kamino, Jupiter Lend) and harvests yield every day. The distinctive part: that yield can pay down a small loan you draw against your own asset — so the position repays itself. You do nothing; the engine works.

1

You invest — from €1

Your asset stays yours, in your custody, as collateral. You do not need to be rich to start.

2

The engine deploys and harvests

Hobba routes the liquidity into vetted vaults and harvests yield automatically every day.

3

The yield comes to you

The earnings go to you and can repay the position by themselves — with no manual work.

You do not have to take our word for it. Everything is visible on-chain, in real time. We went first — a €1 position with our own money — and you can check the whole mechanism yourself: how it works exactly and the live position on-chain ↗.

Your money does not have to sleep.

Start small, learn, then decide. From €1. Access is currently in closed testing — get in touch and we will connect you.

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Sources

  1. Croatian National Bank — deposit and credit-institution interest rate statistics (overnight deposits ~€32bn, interest ~0.2%), 2024–2026. hnb.hr
  2. ECB — Key ECB interest rates (deposit facility rate peaked at 4.00%, 20 Sep 2023 – 11 Jun 2024). ecb.europa.eu
  3. ECB MFI interest rate statistics (household overnight deposits ~0.38% euro area / CNB ~0.18–0.19% Croatia), 2024. ecb.europa.eu
  4. Croatian National Bank annual report / press coverage — interest paid to banks on overnight deposits €532.2m (2024). tockanai.hr
  5. Croatian National Bank — Commentary on banking system developments for 2024 (net profit €1.53bn, ROE 16.4%, foreign ownership ~90%). hnb.hr
  6. Croatian Bureau of Statistics — EDP notification / annual GDP (general government deficit 2024 ≈ €2.0bn / 2.3% of GDP). podaci.dzs.hr

Figures are rounded and independently checked; data gets revised, so each claim carries the publication date of its source. This text is an educational explanation, not investment, legal or tax advice, an offer or a financial promotion. Crypto assets are volatile and can lose value; yields vary and are not guaranteed. Hobba is an independent third-party protocol outside airKUNA's control; verify its claims (audit, yield, availability) yourself.