Is Trade Republic Safe? How investors are protected (2026)

Trade Republic is a broker and bank with low trading costs and a wide range of products, including stocks, ETFs, bonds, derivatives and crypto. It operates in 18 European countries (the 17 eurozone markets it serves plus Poland, its first market outside the eurozone, since September 2025) and has more than 10 million customers with around €150 billion in assets (see our Trade Republic statistics).

Yes, we consider Trade Republic a safe broker, for these reasons:

• It is a fully licensed German bank (licence granted by the European Central Bank in December 2023), supervised by BaFin and the Bundesbank.
• Your stocks and ETFs are your property: they are held separately from Trade Republic’s own assets, so they can’t be used to pay its creditors if it fails.
• Your cash is protected up to €100,000 by the German deposit guarantee scheme.
• If securities ever went missing, the German compensation scheme covers 90% of your claim, up to €20,000.
• It is profitable and well funded, with investors such as Founders Fund, Sequoia, Fidelity and Singapore’s GIC valuing it at €12.5 billion in December 2025.

In short: if Trade Republic went bust, the most likely outcome is that you get your investments back, but with a delay. The protection schemes are a safety net for what happens only if something goes wrong on top of that. Below, we explain each layer in plain terms and what you can do to check your own situation (all information checked in September 2026).

Video summary

What happens to your money if Trade Republic goes bust?

This is the question most investors really want answered. Here is what protects each part of your account:

The key idea is that securities and cash are protected in different ways. Your securities don’t need a guarantee to be safe, because they never belong to Trade Republic in the first place. Your cash, on the other hand, is a claim on the bank, which is why the €100,000 deposit guarantee exists. For a deeper look at how these schemes work across Europe, see our guide to investment protection.

Who regulates Trade Republic

Trade Republic operates as Trade Republic Bank GmbH, a German credit institution. It must comply with strict rules on capital, liquidity, risk management, customer protection and anti-money laundering, and you can check its authorisation yourself in the BaFin company database.

Trade Republic obtained its full banking licence from the European Central Bank in December 2023, which lets it hold customer deposits directly and pay interest on cash.

It serves all its markets from Germany under the EU “passport”. Whether you open an account in Portugal, Spain, Italy or Poland, your contract is with Trade Republic Bank GmbH, BaFin remains the supervisor, and the German protection schemes apply. The regulator in your country (such as the CMVM in Portugal or the CNMV in Spain) oversees conduct rules locally.

Is Trade Republic financially solid?

Protection schemes matter most when a firm is weak, so it’s worth looking at Trade Republic’s finances too:

• Profitable: Trade Republic reported €340 million in revenue and a €34.8 million profit in the year to September 2024, its first full year as a bank, with equity of €566.5 million (Finance Magnates).
• Strong backers: in December 2025, a €1.2 billion secondary share sale valued the company at €12.5 billion. Existing investors (Founders Fund, Sequoia, Accel, TCV, Thrive) were joined by Fidelity, Wellington and GIC. This money went to existing shareholders rather than the company, but it shows strong confidence from long-term institutional investors.
• Less dependent on payment for order flow: the EU ban on payment for order flow took effect on 30 June 2026. Trade Republic had prepared by diversifying its revenue (interest on cash, cards, bonds, crypto and private markets) and by obtaining its own BaFin licence for a multilateral trading facility in January 2026.

One limitation: Trade Republic is not publicly listed, so it publishes less financial information, less often, than listed brokers such as Interactive Brokers or eToro.

Trade Republic pros and cons

Investor protection vs deposit protection

When you use Trade Republic, or any other bank or broker regulated in the EU, your money benefits from two different types of protection, depending on whether it’s securities or cash.

Investor protection (securities)

• Covers stocks, bonds, ETFs and other securities held in your account.
• It doesn’t protect you from market losses, only from the bank failing to return assets that belong to you.
• In Germany, the scheme covers 90% of your claim, up to €20,000 per investor. The EU minimum is €20,000, and some countries go higher.

Deposit protection (cash)

• Covers the cash in your account, held with Trade Republic Bank GmbH or its partner banks.
• Protects you if the bank fails financially.
• Up to €100,000 per depositor and per bank, the same limit across the EU.

How it works in practice

Sounds complicated? Here’s how each one works, with practical examples.

Investor protection

Imagine you’re a Portuguese investor with €50,000 in stocks at Trade Republic. If the broker went bankrupt, your investment wouldn’t be lost. Your securities are your property, not the bank’s: they are held in segregated custody accounts at Clearstream, the German central securities depository, separately from Trade Republic’s own assets, so they can’t be used to pay the bank’s creditors.

In a bankruptcy, you would face a delay while an administrator sorted out who owns what, which could take weeks or months. You would then be able to transfer your securities to another broker. You should recover your investments in full, apart from possible administrative costs.

What if the segregation had not been done properly, or securities were missing because of fraud or error? That is where the investor compensation scheme comes in: it covers 90% of your loss, up to €20,000. In our example, if €30,000 of your stocks had gone missing, you would receive €20,000 (90% of €30,000 would be €27,000, but the cap is €20,000).

Remember, this protection is against the bank failing, not against market falls. If your stocks drop 30%, no scheme compensates you.

Deposit protection

This time, imagine you’re an Italian saver with €100,000 in cash at Trade Republic to earn interest. Your whole balance is protected by the German deposit guarantee scheme, so if Trade Republic failed, you would be entitled to get the full €100,000 back, normally within seven working days.

Three details matter:

• The limit is per bank, not per account: €100,000 at Trade Republic and another €100,000 at a different bank are both fully protected. But if you also hold cash directly at one of Trade Republic’s partner banks, the two balances at that bank share one €100,000 limit.
• Some cash sits at partner banks, such as Citibank Europe, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan SE and HSBC Continental Europe, each covered by its own deposit guarantee scheme.
• Cash above certain limits may be placed in money market funds, which are segregated and belong to you but are not covered by any deposit guarantee. Check in the app where your cash actually sits.

How to check and maximise your protection

If you’re worried about the safety of your portfolio, these practical steps make a difference:

• Keep cash below €100,000 per bank: if you hold more, spread it across banks or invest part of it, since securities don’t count towards the deposit limit.
• Check where your cash sits: the app shows whether your cash is held at Trade Republic, at partner banks or in money market funds.
• Download your statements regularly: keeping your own records of holdings and cash makes any claim much faster if something ever goes wrong.
• Verify the entity: make sure you are dealing with Trade Republic Bank GmbH, which you can look up in the BaFin database, and ignore messages from “Trade Republic” accounts on social media promising returns, which are a common scam.
• Turn on two-factor security: most real-world losses come from phishing and account takeovers, not broker failures.
• Consider using more than one broker for very large portfolios: even with full segregation, a second broker means you can keep investing during any delay.

Other protections and safeguards

Your shares are not lent out. Trade Republic does not run a securities lending programme, so your stocks and ETFs are not lent to third parties such as hedge funds. They stay in your custody account at all times, which removes a layer of counterparty risk that exists at some other brokers.

You can’t lose more than you invest. Trade Republic doesn’t offer margin loans or CFDs to retail clients, and the leveraged products it sells (such as warrants and knock-out certificates) can at worst fall to zero. So there is no scenario where you end up owing money to Trade Republic.

Trade Republic also applies other safeguards required by regulation, including:

• Best execution: it must execute your orders on the best possible terms, considering price, speed, costs and the likelihood of execution.
• Risk warnings and disclosures: it must give you clear information about the risks and costs of investing and the terms of its services.
• Identity checks and anti-money laundering: it verifies the identity and residence of its clients and applies strict measures to prevent fraud.
• Data protection: it must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Since June 2024, Trade Republic also runs securities settlement and custody in-house, replacing HSBC as its custodian. It connects directly to Clearstream and handles corporate actions and dividends itself, which gives it more control over the whole chain. And in January 2026, one of its subsidiaries obtained a BaFin licence to operate a multilateral trading facility, so it can execute trades itself following the EU ban on payment for order flow.

Any controversies?

No regulator has found problems with the safety of client assets at Trade Republic. The main criticisms relate to customer service, which has received many complaints as the customer base grew quickly.

Summing up

All in all, we consider Trade Republic a safe broker. It is a fully licensed German bank supervised by BaFin and the Bundesbank, it is profitable and well funded, your securities are held separately in your name, and your cash is covered by the German deposit guarantee.

If Trade Republic failed, the realistic worst case for most investors is a delay before getting their investments back, not a loss. The €20,000 compensation scheme only comes into play if securities go missing, and the €100,000 deposit guarantee covers your cash.

Its main weaknesses are not about safety: customer service can be slow, it isn’t publicly listed, and it has a shorter track record than Europe’s older brokers. Keep in mind that no scheme protects you against market losses, which are part of investing.

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