Portuguese Households Park a Record €13.4 Billion in New Term Deposits in April — Headline Rate Notches a Third Straight Tick to 1.44% While the Eurozone Average Sits 47 Basis Points Higher at 1.91%
Portuguese households opened a record €13.398 billion of new term deposits in April. The average rate ticked up 2 basis points to 1.44% in a third straight monthly climb, but still pays 47 bp under the 1.91% eurozone average, BdP data show.
The average interest rate paid on new household term deposits in Portugal climbed 2 basis points in April to 1.44% — the third consecutive monthly increase — according to the monthly monetary and financial statistics tape that the Banco de Portugal (BdP, Bank of Portugal) released this week. The April reading lifts the rate above March's 1.42% but still leaves Portuguese savers 20 basis points below the 1.64% they were drawing a year ago and 164 basis points below the December 2023 peak of 3.08% reached at the top of the post-pandemic ECB tightening cycle.
The new-deposit volume hits a record
The headline rate climb landed alongside a record on the volume side. Portuguese households opened €13.398 billion of new term deposits in April — up €288 million on the same month of 2025 (€12.970 billion) and the highest reading in the BdP's published series. Short-dated paper continues to dominate the flow: 97% of the new-deposit envelope went into maturities of one year or less, the band on which the 1.44% TANB (taxa anual nominal bruta, gross annual nominal rate) is calculated.
The volume strength sits on a familiar precautionary-savings narrative. Households on the BdP's quarterly Inquérito à Situação Financeira have been signalling a savings preference for several quarters, and the savings rate hit 14.3% of disposable income in Q4 2025 — the highest reading since the immediate post-pandemic spike. The April record is consistent with continuing concerns over the Middle East conflict — a factor Público's banking desk flagged as a driver — and with a more cautious household stance running into the second-half ECB rate path.
Portugal still trails the eurozone average
The eurozone average rate on the same instrument rose 5 basis points in April to 1.91%, outpacing Portugal's 2 basis-point lift. As a result, Portugal slipped one rung in the eurozone league table — from fifth-lowest to sixth-lowest among the 20 euro-area economies on new household term-deposit rates. The 47 basis-point gap to the eurozone average remains a structural feature of the Portuguese banking market: the five large universal banks (CGD, Millennium BCP, Santander Totta, Novobanco and BPI) run the country's most concentrated deposit base in the EU and have priced retail deposits below the eurozone median for almost every month of the past decade.
The Certificados de Aforro alternative
Households shopping for savings yield can still beat the bank deposit rate by routing into Certificados de Aforro (Savings Certificates) — the IGCP-issued retail savings instrument indexed to the three-month Euribor with a 1.0 percentage-point spread on the Série F. The Série F gross monthly rate stood at 2.138% in April, more than 69 basis points above the average bank term deposit. Subscriptions and redemptions on Certificados de Aforro are managed through the eCo CTT counter or the IGCP online portal, and the instrument keeps its capital-guarantee tax-deferred status under the Código do IRS (Personal Income Tax Code).
The mortgage-deposit scissors
The April tape sits inside a notable scissors with the BdP's mortgage-rate release the same week. The average rate on new home loans in Portugal — the headline metric tracked by Euribor-indexed variable trackers — rose 5 basis points in April to 2.86%, the highest level since June 2025 and the first 2026 climb. The spread between what Portuguese banks charge new mortgage borrowers and what they pay new household depositors widened to 142 basis points in April, up from 138 basis points in March. The net interest margin on retail banking — the engine of the bumper 2024-2025 sector profits — continues to widen at the margin even as the absolute level of both legs grinds lower.
Outlook into June
The ECB Governing Council kept the deposit facility rate unchanged at 2.00% at its 5 June 2026 meeting in Frankfurt, after a one-quarter pause in April. The forward curve embedded in Euribor pricing now signals a final 25 basis-point cut in September — a move that, if delivered, would reset bank funding costs roughly 15 basis points lower into Q4 and keep downward pressure on new-deposit pricing. The Euribor 12-month — the reference for most Portuguese variable-rate mortgages — sits at 2.183% as of the 4 June fixing, its lowest reading since October 2022. Households re-pricing a 30-year tracker at the November 2026 review date will land roughly 60 basis points below their 2024 reset; new depositors locking in a 12-month rate today will land roughly 70 basis points below the December 2023 high.
Sources: Banco de Portugal — Estatísticas Monetárias e Financeiras (April 2026 release); BPstat series 12519807 (TANB de novos depósitos a prazo dos particulares); Público banking desk (5 June 2026); Jornal Económico deposit-rate analysis; ECB Governing Council monetary-policy decisions, 5 June 2026; IGCP Certificados de Aforro Série F rate calendar.
