The following list of banks in Austria is to be understood within the framework of the European single market and European banking union, which means that Austria's banking system is more open to cross-border banking operations than peers outside of the EU.
European banking supervision distinguishes between significant institutions (SIs) and less significant institutions (LSIs), with SI/LSI designations updated regularly by the European Central Bank (ECB). Significant institutions are directly supervised by the ECB using joint supervisory teams that involve the national competent authorities (NCAs) of individual participating countries. Less significant institutions are supervised by the relevant NCA on a day-to-day basis, under the supervisory oversight of the ECB. [1] In Austria's case, the NCA is the Financial Market Authority. [2]
A specific feature of the EU framework is that it provides for the possibility of institutional protection scheme that bind together networks of local banks into idiosyncratic risk-sharing arrangements. [3] Of the EU's eight IPSs as of 2022, [4] : 12 two are in Austria, namely the Sparkassengruppe Österreich and Raiffeisen Banking Group.
As of 1 September 2025, the list of supervised institutions maintained by the ECB included the following seven Austrian banking groups as SIs, with names as indicated by the ECB for each group's consolidating entity. [5] Of these, four were part of the two Austrian IPSs.
A study published in 2024 assessed that the bank with most aggregate assets in Austria (as opposed to total consolidated assets, as of end-2023) was Erste Group at €189 billion, followed by UniCredit (€103 billion, via UniCredit Bank Austria), RBI (€93 billion), BAWAG (€55 billion), Raiffeisen Oberösterreich (€48 billion), and the Volksbank Group (€30 billion). [6] : 27–28 Austria is also home to subsidiaries of other euro-area significant institutions, namely Crédit Agricole and Santander. [5]
As of 1 September 2025, the ECB's list of supervised institutions included 324 Austrian LSIs. 278 of these, or nearly 86 percent of the total, were in the Raiffeisen IPS, including all those carrying the Raiffeisen name plus Posojilnica Bank . [5]
The ECB's list of 1 September 2025 included ten LSIs designated by the ECB as "high-impact" on the basis of several criteria including size, of which six in the Raiffeisen IPS:
The ECB's list of 1 September 2025 included 9 LSIs that were affiliates of financial groups outside the euro area, among which 2 branches and 7 subsidiaries:
The 33 other, non-Raiffeisen Austrian LSIs on the ECB's list were:
The Austrian National Bank, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank, [9] and Austria Wirtschaftsservice Gesellschaft are public credit institutions that do not hold a banking license under EU law.
A number of former Austrian banks, defined as having been headquartered in the present-day territory of Austria, are documented on Wikipedia. They are listed below in chronological order of establishment.
