Imagine moving to a new country. You don’t speak the language well. You don’t know how the banks work. You’re paying more in rent than most of your neighbours, and you’re still trying to send money back home. Now imagine trying to open a savings account. Or apply for a small business loan. Or even understand your electricity bill.
This is the daily reality millions of immigrants living in Europe face. And the cost of ignoring it, for them and for the rest of us, is higher than most people think.
In 2019 alone, EU Member States granted citizenship to 729,000 people – a number that highlights the growing importance of immigrant integration across Europe. These individuals contribute to the prosperity, diversity, and economic development of their host countries. Yet many still face major barriers to financial inclusion: limited credit history, difficulty accessing banking services, documentation challenges, and unfamiliarity with financial systems. This isn’t just a challenge for immigrants, it’s a challenge for Europe’s long-term economic resilience and social cohesion.
Financial exclusion doesn’t have a single cause. It’s a pile-up of barriers that hit immigrants from every direction.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Housing costs are crushing: In 2019, 1 in 4 non-EU citizens in Europe spent too much of their income on housing. That’s nearly three times the rate for national citizens.
When most of your money goes to rent, there’s little left for savings, education, or building a future.
- Credit history doesn’t travel: You could have been a perfectly responsible borrower back home. But when you arrive in a new country, that record doesn’t follow you. Banks see a blank page and often say no.
- The paperwork is a maze: Many immigrants don’t know exactly what documents they need to open a bank account. Some are afraid that sharing their information with a bank could trigger contact with immigration authorities. So they keep their savings under the mattress instead.
- Language is a wall: Financial documents, contracts, terms and conditions, these are hard enough to understand in your first language. In a second or third language, they can be nearly impossible.
- Women have it harder: Two-thirds of the world’s low-literate adults are women. Female immigrants are less likely to own a smartphone, less likely to have internet access, and more likely to be excluded from financial services altogether. That’s not a coincidence, it’s a systemic problem.
About the white paper: This White Paper covers six key areas: financial vulnerability, housing inequality, gender gaps, digital access, language and literacy barriers, and financial education. It combines EU data with on-the-ground insights from the PLOUTOS project, an EU-funded initiative focused on financial literacy and entrepreneurship for immigrants. It doesn’t just describe problems, it points to practical solutions. And it doesn’t talk about immigrants in the abstract. It uses real data, real numbers, and real stories to show what’s happening on the ground.
Who it’s for: Policymakers working on integration and inclusion. Researchers studying migration, fintech, or social equity. NGOs and service providers working directly with immigrant communities. Banks and digital tool designers who want to build things that actually work.
Ready to dig into the full research? Download “Empowering Immigrants for Financial Inclusion”.
It’s free. It’s open access. And it might just change how you think about financial inclusion in Europe.
- Digital tools are part of the solution, but only if they’re designed right. Most immigrants do use the internet. Even in Croatia, which had the lowest rate in the study, 78% of non-nationals had been online in the past three months. That’s actually quite high. But using the internet and being comfortable with complex financial platforms are very different things. Apps and tools need to be simple, visual, and multilingual. If a tool requires you to jump between five different platforms, or uses language that assumes a university degree, it will fail the people it’s supposed to help.
- Overcrowded housing makes everything harder. It might seem odd to talk about housing in a paper about financial services. But the connection is real. When people live in overcrowded homes, often multigenerational, time is scarce. Privacy is limited. It’s hard to sit down and work through a financial education course when there are three kids in the room and dinner to cook. Any solution that ignores the physical reality of people’s lives will miss the mark.
- Community and trust are the missing ingredients. Immigrants are far more likely to turn to a neighbour, a community leader, or a family member for financial advice than to walk into a bank branch. That’s not a flaw, but rather how trust works. The most effective tools will work with these community networks, not around them. Peer learning, shared access, and familiar faces matter more than slick interfaces.
Europe has an ageing population. It needs workers, entrepreneurs, and taxpayers. Immigrants are already here, already contributing. But if they can’t access financial services, can’t build credit, can’t save for the future, they can’t fully participate in the economy. That’s a loss for everyone. For policymakers, this White Paper is a call to redesign integration programmes with financial inclusion at the centre, not as an afterthought. For banks and fintech companies, it’s a signal that there’s a huge, underserved market with specific needs. Meeting those needs isn’t charity. It’s good business. For researchers and NGOs, it’s a roadmap of where the gaps are and what the data actually shows.
The White Paper also highlights a specific tool, the PACT Analysis framework, which looks at People, Activities, Contexts, and Technologies together. Instead of asking “what can this tool do?”, PACT asks “what does this person actually need, in their real life, right now?” That shift in thinking changes everything.
