CRD VI: Why your banking relationship becomes a structural question in 2027

A European directive that almost nobody has read will decide, from 2027, who is allowed to hold your account. Not your credit standing, not your volume - your residence.

What changes on 11 January 2027

With Directive (EU) 2024/1619 - CRD VI - the European Union closes a gap that has been open for decades: banks from third countries were able to serve European clients without being subject to European supervision. The new Article 21c ends that. Any firm from outside the European Economic Area wishing to provide core banking services to EU clients will need an authorised branch or subsidiary in the relevant member state.

For supervisors this is a matter of consistency. For you as an entrepreneur it is a matter of availability: a significant share of the institutions currently providing these services cross-border will not go through the effort of establishing an EU branch. Their rational answer is not expansion, but selection.

In Germany, implementation runs through the BRUBEG, adopted by the Bundestag in early 2026, which anchors the licensing requirement for third-country branches in the Banking Act (KWG). One practical side effect matters more than the statutory text: the exemption under section 2(5) KWG, which numerous foreign - particularly Swiss - institutions have used to access the German market, no longer covers core banking business. Existing exemptions must be revoked to that extent.

Less is covered than you think - and more than you hope

Article 21c does not target "banking" in general, but three clearly defined activities from Annex I of the directive:

• Deposit-taking - current, savings, call and term deposit accounts as well as other repayable funds.
• Lending - from mortgage finance through factoring to secured credit lines.
• Guarantees and commitments - sureties, bonds, letters of credit.

What is missing from that list matters just as much: investment services. Custody, securities trading and portfolio management fall under MiFID II, with its own third-country regime. A securities account and a current account are not the same thing in regulatory terms - even if both sit with the same bank and appear one below the other in your online banking.

This distinction is the single most important finding for any wealth structure. It may well mean that your securities holdings at a Swiss institution remain unaffected, while the associated settlement account and Lombard facility become an issue. Whether a specific service qualifies as ancillary to investment business or as standalone deposit-taking depends on how the product is structured - a question to put to your institution in writing.

And one more point the public debate consistently overlooks: the rule does not distinguish between natural and legal persons. An operating account held by your German GmbH at a non-EU bank falls within scope just as much as the shareholder's private account.

Three places where this actually hurts

Media attention focuses on the private account abroad. That is the most easily replaced building block. The painful places lie elsewhere.

First: the credit line. Anyone using a Lombard facility against a securities portfolio at a third-country institution holds financing that depends on that very relationship. If the institution terminates it, more than an account closes - a facility falls due, potentially at a moment you did not choose. Liquidating pledged securities into a weak market is the most expensive possible ending to this story.

Second: the operating account. Companies with suppliers or customers outside the EU frequently maintain foreign-currency accounts with local institutions. Losing such a relationship does not affect investments - it affects payments, and therefore operations. Realistically, replacing one takes three to six months once KYC, signing authorities and payment run adjustments are counted.

Third: concentration. Many well-organised balance sheets carry an unnoticed cluster risk: one institution covering custody, liquidity, credit and foreign currency simultaneously. That is convenient and, in calm times, cheap. It also means a single regulatory decision hits four functions at once. Diversification is taken for granted within a portfolio - at counterparty level it is routinely forgotten.

What the exemptions are worth

The directive provides exemptions. It is worth assessing how much weight they can carry before building a structure on them.

Reverse solicitation. Where the client approaches the third-country firm exclusively at their own initiative, the branch requirement does not apply. The exemption exists - but the burden of proof and liability sits with the institution, it covers only the specific service requested, and compliance departments tend to decide borderline cases restrictively. A rule that a counterparty may unilaterally decline to apply is not a planning basis.

Grandfathering of existing contracts. Relationships established before 11 July 2026 are intended to be allowed to continue. The German implementation, however, contains no express provision to that effect; the explanatory memorandum acknowledges grandfathering, but its precise scope remains unsettled among practitioners. It is particularly unclear how a later extension, conversion or product migration should be treated. Treat this date as a buffer, not a foundation.

Interbank and intragroup transactions remain exempt. That matters for group structures with their own finance company - not for the typical mid-sized business with one foreign banking relationship.

What expressly does not work: a company established solely to place an account formally in the name of a legal person. Institutions identify the beneficial owner. If that remains a person resident in the EEA, the structure merely relocates the problem - while adding substance, accounting and reporting obligations. Structures work when they serve a genuine economic purpose. Otherwise they are cost with added risk.

Your roadmap through 2026

The task is not a legal one, it is an inventory. Five steps that belong in any Q4 2026 planning cycle:

1. Map your counterparties. Record every banking relationship - private and corporate - with institution, country of domicile, product type, and whether the institution holds an EU authorisation or an EU branch. This overview rarely exists; two hours of work will tell you whether you are affected at all.

2. Separate the functions. For each relationship, establish which function it serves: liquidity, custody, credit, payments. Regulatory exposure runs precisely along those lines - and this is where you see whether a single termination would hit several functions at once.

3. Obtain written confirmation. Ask your institutions directly: which of your products do they consider to fall under Article 21c, and what is their plan for EU-resident clients from 2027? The answers differ considerably - and they are more reliable than any general market analysis.

4. Build redundancy. Every critical function deserves a second, independent relationship. That is not a response to CRD VI but sound treasury practice - the directive merely supplies the occasion finally to implement it.

5. Review financing early. Where a credit line depends on an affected relationship, arrange the follow-on financing before somebody else arranges it for you. Negotiating under time pressure almost always costs more than the interest differential you were trying to save.

The sober assessment

CRD VI is not groundwork for expropriation; it closes a supervisory gap - with a side effect that hits one group harder than others: internationally organised entrepreneurs and estates for whom a banking relationship outside the EU is not exotic but operational.

Handling it is no different from handling any other structural risk: you measure it before it materialises, and you build redundancy while you still set the terms. In this case the difference between an orderly and an expensive outcome does not lie in legal interpretation. It lies in twelve months of lead time.

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