Banco Santander was the largest bank in Spain as of September 2023, with total assets amounting to roughly 1.81 trillion euros. The other top contenders were BBVA and CaixaBank, with 758 and 500 billion euros in assets, respectively.
Figures from Statista highlight how the banking landscape in Spain is marked by a large gap that separates leading banks and medium-sized banks since the latter’s assets are far from reaching the volume of the former.
Spanish banking assets
Loans and credits constitute some of the most important assets in the banking industry. The volume of lending to households, companies and other banks in Spain decreased over the last decade, falling from 2.4 to two trillion euros between 2010 and 2022.
Other outstanding banking assets are deposits in central banks and other credit institutions, and financial instruments. As for the latter, Spanish credit institutions makeup one of the largest buyers of government debt.
Statista reports: “A high demand for Spanish Treasury bills and bonds, along with investor confidence and an improved credit rating, have been driving bond yields down. The average yield of long-term government bonds plummeted after 2012, and by 2022, it was approximately 2.18 per cent.”
Bank solvency and liquidity
Solvency and liquidity are both crucial indicators of the banking system’s health, and assets and liabilities play an important role in both of them. Kutxabank and Banco de Credito Social Cooperativo were the most solvent Spanish banks as of June 2022, according to the CET1 fully-loaded capital ratio, whereas Santander ranked eighth.
As for liquidity, the ratio between loans and deposits (LTD) decreased substantially between 2010 and 2022, from 149 to 101.57 per cent. A lower LTD ratio indicates a good degree of liquidity that allows banks to respond to customer requests for fund requirements.
This is a list of the big banks in Spain.
Spain has 10 banking groups that are directly supervised by the European Central Bank as of September 2021, the “big four” in Spain are:
- Banco Santander
- BBVA
- Caixabank
- Banco Sabadell
There were formerly a “big six” composed of three banks that are now part of BBVA (Banco de Bilbao, Banco de Vizcaya, and state-owned Banco Argentaria) and three now combined as Santander (Banco Central, Banco Hispanoamericano, and Banco de Santander).
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