Alta Bank Bankruptcy: How to Recover Your Money Below and Above 50,000 Euros

Quick facts

• The National Bank of Serbia revoked Alta Bank's licence on 30 October 2026 and handed the bank to the Deposit Insurance Agency. The Commercial Court in Belgrade opens the formal bankruptcy, and every deadline counts from that ruling.
• Insured: up to 50,000 euros per depositor, all accounts in the bank added together, interest included. Covered: private individuals (resident or not), entrepreneurs, and micro, small and medium companies.
• Insured payout: through another bank, starting within 7 working days of the court ruling. Details follow within 3 working days. Nothing to file. You have 3 years to collect.
• Above 50,000 euros: a claim filed with the Commercial Court in Belgrade within 30 to 90 days of the court notice in the Official Gazette. Court fee at most 7,000 dinars (~60 EUR).
• The uninsured part of an insured depositor's money sits in the first payment rank, ahead of the tax authorities and large companies.
• Loans to Alta Bank are still owed. Set-off against your deposit needs a declaration filed inside the claim deadline.
• Recovery of the uninsured part takes years. The Agrobanka bankruptcy ran for more than 12 years.

What happened to Alta Bank and where the process stands

On the night of 30 to 31 October 2026 the National Bank of Serbia revoked the operating licence of Alta banka a.d. Beograd, the bank's Serbian name, after finding that its financial position had worsened and that depositors were at risk. Management passed to the Deposit Insurance Agency at once. Branches closed, cards stopped working and every account was frozen. Reports put the number of blocked accounts at around 66,000, about 56,000 of them held by individuals and 10,000 by companies.

Alta Bank mattered to foreigners far more than its 3 percent market share suggests. It was one of few Serbian banks that readily opened accounts for Russian and Ukrainian citizens, and it banked thousands of companies founded by foreign nationals living in Serbia on a temporary residence permit. For many of them, every euro they had in Serbia was in this one bank.

The licence revocation is not the bankruptcy itself. The bankruptcy opens when the Commercial Court in Belgrade issues its ruling and appoints the Agency as administrator. Every deadline in this article counts from that ruling, not from the day the bank closed. The Agency expected the ruling on 2 November 2026; until the court publishes its notice, the exact dates below are not fixed.

Alta Bank deposit insurance: who gets up to 50,000 euros

Under the Law on Deposit Insurance the insured amount is 50,000 euros per depositor per bank, not per account. Your current account, savings account and term deposit at Alta Bank are added together, with the contractual interest accrued to the day the bankruptcy opens, and the total is insured up to 50,000 euros. Dinar and foreign currency deposits both count.

The insurance covers three groups:

• Private individuals, whether or not they are resident in Serbia. A Russian, Turkish or Chinese citizen with an Alta Bank account is covered on the same terms as a Serbian citizen.
• Entrepreneurs, the sole trader form called preduzetnik in Serbian.
• Micro, small and medium-sized companies.

Not covered: large companies, state bodies and public enterprises, banks and other financial institutions, and a deposit pledged as collateral for a loan equal to or larger than the deposit. Money held as a securities investor falls under a separate investor protection scheme, which the Agency's notice will also address.

The payout is guaranteed by the Republic of Serbia. In its statement of 2 November 2026 the National Bank of Serbia confirmed that insured deposits will be paid in full up to 50,000 euros and that the Agency has the funds to do it.

When and how the Alta Bank payout happens

Alta Bank itself pays nothing. The Agency chooses another bank, the paying bank, sends it the depositor list and the amounts, and that bank pays you over its counter. In the last comparable case, Univerzal banka in 2014, the paying bank was the state-owned Poštanska štedionica. For Alta Bank the paying bank had not been named at the time of writing.

To collect, you need your passport or ID card and proof that you were a client, such as a contract, a card or a statement. If you disagree with the amount the Agency has calculated, you can ask it in writing to review the figure. If you are outside Serbia, collection through a representative with a certified power of attorney is the usual route; the Agency's notice will set out the form it accepts.

You do not file a claim for the insured amount. Once the Agency pays you, your claim against the bank for that amount passes to the Agency, which recovers it from the estate ahead of everyone else.

More than 50,000 euros in Alta Bank: filing a claim in the bankruptcy

If your total at Alta Bank was above 50,000 euros, the difference is not lost, but it is not guaranteed either. It becomes a claim against Alta Bank in bankruptcy, which you recover the way every other creditor does: by filing it with the court and waiting for the estate to be sold. Example: you held 70,000 euros across two accounts. The Agency pays you 50,000 euros. The remaining 20,000 euros is a claim you must file.

The procedure is set by the Law on Bankruptcy and Liquidation of Banks and Insurance Companies:

1. The deadline. The court ruling sets a period of no less than 30 and no more than 90 days for creditors to file claims, counted from the day the notice is published in the Official Gazette (Službeni glasnik). Under the general bankruptcy rules that fill the gaps in the banking law, a late claim is examined only at a later hearing at your own cost, and a claim filed more than 120 days after publication is rejected outright.
2. The filing. The claim goes to the Commercial Court in Belgrade in writing. It states the amount, split into principal and interest, the legal basis, which is your deposit contract and the balance on the day the bankruptcy opened, and it attaches statements, contracts and any confirmation of your balance. It also names the account to which distributions should be paid.
3. The court fee. From 1 November 2026 the fee is 2,000 dinars (~17 EUR) for claims up to 250,000 dinars (~2,130 EUR). Above that, 1 percent of the claim is added, capped at 7,000 dinars (~60 EUR) in total. A 20,000 euro claim pays the cap.
4. Examination. The Agency checks every filed claim and must finish within six months of the filing deadline. The examination hearing, which settles the final list of recognised and disputed claims, is held within 60 days after the filing deadline. A disputed claim is referred to a court case with its own short deadline.
5. Distribution. Recognised claims are paid as the estate is turned into cash, in the order the law prescribes, and in proportion within each rank.

Who gets paid first from the Alta Bank estate

Before any creditor is paid, the estate covers the costs of the proceedings, including the Agency's own claim for the insured deposits it has already paid out. After costs, the law sets seven payment ranks. A lower rank is paid only after the one above it is paid in full, and within a rank everyone receives the same percentage.

The wording of the first rank is dense and public commentary has read it in different ways. On the plain text of the law, the uninsured remainder of an individual's or a small company's deposit stands ahead of the tax authorities and ahead of large companies' deposits. That is a better position than most Alta Bank clients assume, and a reason to file the claim properly.

How much reaches the first rank depends on the estate. Alta Bank reported total assets of about 214.9 billion dinars (~1.83 billion EUR) at the end of July 2026, its loans remain payable, and partial distributions are possible as assets are sold. Timing is the hard part: the Agrobanka bankruptcy, closed in February 2026, lasted more than 12 years. Plan for years.

If you also have a loan with Alta Bank

The bankruptcy does not cancel what you owe. The National Bank has said that Alta Bank's debtors remain bound by their contracts and will receive payment instructions once the proceedings open. Stopping payments now puts you in default on a loan the estate will still collect.

What you can do is set your deposit against your loan. The banking bankruptcy law refers set-off to the general bankruptcy rules, which allow it on one condition: you file your claim for the full deposit and a set-off declaration with the court before the claim deadline expires. Miss that and the right is lost. For someone with 80,000 euros on deposit and a 60,000 euro loan, the declaration is the difference between owing nothing and owing 60,000 euros while waiting years for 30,000 euros from the estate.

Russian and Ukrainian citizens with Alta Bank accounts

A large share of Alta Bank's foreign clients were citizens of Russia and Ukraine who moved to Serbia after 2022. The reason is practical. Serbian law allows non-residents to open accounts, but each bank decides which clients it accepts and runs its own anti-money-laundering checks, and since 2022 most banks have applied those checks to applicants from Russia and Ukraine more strictly and more slowly. Alta Bank accepted these applications more readily, had Russian-speaking staff, and offered non-residents a dedicated account for paying in company founding capital. Many clients therefore held their savings, their company accounts, the funds they showed for a residence permit and the money for a property purchase all in this one bank.

For the bankruptcy itself, nationality changes nothing. An individual is insured up to 50,000 euros whether resident or not. A Serbian company or sole trader business founded by a Russian or Ukrainian citizen is insured if it is a resident micro, small or medium entity, which almost all of them are. A claim for the amount above 50,000 euros is filed the same way and ranks the same way as a Serbian citizen's claim.

The harder question is where to bank next, because the insured payout arrives at a paying bank and a company needs a working account within days. Acceptance still varies from bank to bank and from applicant to applicant. In our experience the state-owned Poštanska štedionica remains somewhat more open to applications from Russian and Ukrainian citizens than most other Serbian banks, although it tightened its conditions for non-residents in September 2026 and decides each case on its own documents. Expect to show a passport, proof of address, the basis of your stay in Serbia and the source of the funds you will deposit. A residence application or renewal that depends on proof of funds or on a Serbian account cannot wait for the bankruptcy, so if that is your position, the question of which residence permit fits your situation and what proof it needs is worth settling now.

Companies and property buyers with frozen Alta Bank accounts

Companies. Around 10,000 company accounts were frozen, among them an estimated several thousand companies founded by Russian citizens. A company cannot pay salaries, taxes or suppliers from a frozen account. The first step is to open a business bank account at another bank so that payroll and tax payments run on time, and to give the new account number to your accountant, clients and suppliers. The second step is the claim: the company collects its insured 50,000 euros like any other depositor and files for the rest, with the set-off declaration if it also has an Alta loan.

Property buyers. Many foreign buyers routed the purchase price for a flat or house through Alta Bank, and some had the money sitting there on 30 October. A signed purchase agreement with a payment date is now a contract the buyer may not be able to perform on time. That is fixed by an annex with the seller before the date passes, not by a dispute after it. If you are mid-purchase, our guide to buying property in Serbia explains how payment and registration normally run; get the contract looked at now.

How we handle Alta Bank claims

Start in Serbia is a law consultancy in Belgrade. We act for foreign individuals and foreign-owned companies in Serbia, and bank bankruptcy claims are court work of exactly the kind our attorneys run.

The insured payout the Agency will handle. The difficulty is everything around it: working out your insured and uninsured amounts across several accounts and currencies, preparing a claim the Agency cannot dispute on form, filing it with the Commercial Court inside the deadline together with the set-off declaration where you also owe a loan, attending the examination hearing, taking a disputed claim to court, and following the distributions for as long as they take. For clients outside Serbia we collect the insured amount under a power of attorney. Alongside the claim, we prepare and file the account-opening documents for you or your company at another bank, deal with residence paperwork that depended on the frozen funds, and amend a property contract whose payment date no longer works.

If you had money in Alta Bank, tell us how much, in which currencies and whether you also had a loan, using the contact section below this article. We will tell you which track you are on and what has to be filed by when.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to file anything to get my insured 50,000 euros?
No. The Agency calculates the insured amount from the bank's records and pays it through the paying bank. You bring your passport or ID and proof that you were a client. You have three years from the court ruling to collect.

I had 50,000 euros in savings and 20,000 euros on my current account. How much is insured?
50,000 euros in total, because the insurance is per depositor, not per account. The remaining 20,000 euros is a claim you must file with the Commercial Court in Belgrade within the 30 to 90 day deadline the court sets.

I am a Russian or Ukrainian citizen on a temporary residence permit. Am I covered?
Yes. Private individuals are insured whether or not they are Serbian residents, and nationality plays no role in the insurance or in the bankruptcy claim. If you hold the account through your Serbian company, the company is covered as long as it is a resident micro, small or medium entity, which a one-person consulting company is.

My company had 300,000 euros at Alta Bank for salaries and suppliers. What now?
If the company is a Serbian micro, small or medium entity, it receives 50,000 euros through the paying bank. The other 250,000 euros is a first-rank claim against the estate and must be filed within the deadline. Open an account at another bank immediately so that November salaries and taxes are paid on time.

How long until the uninsured part is paid?
Nobody can promise a date. The administrator has six months after the filing deadline to examine claims, and payments follow the sale of the bank's assets, with partial distributions possible along the way. The Agrobanka bankruptcy took more than 12 years to close. Expect years, file correctly once, and keep your bank account details current with the court.