Report on the 2025 cross-border provision of investment services to retail clients in the EU and EEA
The Neural Herald summary, AI-generated
Notice on the use of AI. In compliance with Article 50(4) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 on Artificial Intelligence (AI Act), we disclose that the summaries, explanations and translations published by The Neural Herald are generated with artificial intelligence and published without prior human review. The linked official documents belong to each body and were not generated by our AI. Our summaries may contain errors: always check the original document.
The annual analysis by ESMA and national authorities shows that cross-border provision of investment services to retail clients kept growing strongly in 2025: about 15.5 million EEA clients received services from firms in another Member State, almost twice as many as in 2023.
Key points
- 379 firms provide cross-border services to retail clients, up 2% on 2024; client numbers rose 47%.
- Cyprus remains the main home country (20% of passporting firms), followed by Luxembourg (14%) and Germany (12%).
- France, Spain, Germany and Italy are the main destinations; complaints were stable.
Who is affected
Retail investors, investment firms using the EU passport and national supervisors, including the CNMV.
Deadlines
Next data collection in 2027.
Plain-language version
According to ESMA, the EU watchdog for stock markets and investment products, about 15.5 million Europeans invested through firms based in another EU country in 2025, almost double the 2023 figure. That is what happens when you use an app or broker based abroad. Cyprus is the most common home base and Spain one of the main destinations. Complaints have stayed stable.
Read the original document →
Prompt for your AICopies a ready-to-paste prompt for ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini: it asks the model to read the official document and not to make anything up.
Summary produced with artificial intelligence from the official publication. It may contain errors: always check the original document.
More from ESMA
- 11 November 2026Market makers and authorised primary dealers who are using the exemption under the SSR - XLS
- 11 November 2026Market makers and authorised primary dealers who are using the exemption under the SSR - PDF
- 10 November 2026List of designated authorities, payment systems and securities settlement systems
- 9 November 2026Register of authorised European long-term investment funds (ELTIFs)
- 9 November 2026EU seeks nominations for stakeholder group on tokenisation standards in finance
- 9 November 2026Call for nominations for the European Tokenisation Standards Group