The European Central Bank (ECB) has updated its dataset of structural financial indicators for the banking sector in the European Union (EU) to the end of 2025. This annual dataset comprises, amongst other indicators, statistics for credit institutions in the EU with respect to the number of offices and employees as well as data on banking sector concentration within each Member State.
The structural financial indicators show a further decline in the number of bank offices in the EU by 2.62%. Decreases were observed in 23 of the 27 countries, ranging from -0.2% to -12.16%. The total number of offices in the EU was 122,889 at the end of 2025, of which 86.13% are located in the euro area.
In the course of 2025, the number of employees of credit institutions fell in 16 of the 27 Member States, with an EU-level drop of 0.80% at EU level (Chart 1).
The data also indicate that the degree of banking sector concentration (measured by the share of assets held by the five largest credit institutions) continues to vary considerably between EU Member States (Chart 2). At national level the share of total assets of the five largest credit institutions ranged from 34.37% to 95.2%, while the EU average was 69.33% at the end of 2025.
The structural financial indicators are published by the ECB on an annual basis.
