Dutch savings hit record €517 billion, central bank says

Dutch households held a record 517 billion euros in savings accounts by the end of June, an 8 percent increase from the same period last year, according to figures released by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch central bank.

The increase in savings is reportedly entirely due to the growth in regular, low-interest savings accounts. Funds held in deposit accounts actually declined by 1 billion euros over the past year, according RTL.

Of that total, 429 billion euros was in directly accessible savings accounts, an amount that rose 10 percent year-over-year. An additional 88 billion euros was held in fixed-term deposit accounts, where savers agree in advance not to withdraw their funds for a set period—often a year—in exchange for higher interest rates.

Despite relatively low returns—ABN Amro, ING, and Rabobank currently offer between 1.25 and 1.4 percent on standard savings accounts—households continue to favor liquidity. The amount held in standard checking accounts, which typically yield no interest, stood at nearly 112 billion euros at the end of June, a 4 percent decrease from the previous year.

When checking and savings balances are combined, Dutch residents had approximately 628 billion euros parked in domestic bank accounts. Dutch households also held nearly 19 billion euros in bank accounts elsewhere in the eurozone as of the end of March, according to DNB. However, the total amount of Dutch savings held outside the eurozone is unknown, as the European Central Bank does not collect data on those holdings.