Savings and investment accounts: the wrapper is easy – the system is not

Europe doesn’t lack savings. It lacks conversion. Households save a lot but too much of that money sits in low-yield places that preserve nominal value while quietly losing purchasing power year after year. At the same time, Europe’s investment priorities – innovation, transition, productivity, security – need larger pools of patient capital than bank balance sheets alone can reliably supply.

That’s the case for savings and investment accounts (SIAs). SIAs are a straightforward ‘wrapper’ that can make investing easier to access, more routine and more commonplace. But the wrapper is just the surface. The tougher issue is whether they become true mass-market infrastructure for long-term investing or simply a subsidised route into complexity.

The real policy question isn’t whether SIAs sound good in theory. It’s whether they are built to shift behaviour at scale without fragmenting the single market or skewing outcomes. 

Apostolos Thomadakis is Head of Research at ECMI, and Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Financial Markets and Institutions Unit at CEPS. The commentary was informed by discussions at a CEPS-ECMI seminar, Making savings and investment accounts work for Europe, held on 26 February 2026.