Finanzmarktaufsicht (FMA) - Austria

How many entities does the FMA supervise?

All figures as at 31 December 2025, from the FMA Annual Report 2025: 427 credit institutions, 18 EEA bank branches, 72 insurance undertakings, 57 investment firms, 43 investment services providers, 36 registered AIFMs, 23 licensed AIFMs, 14 asset management companies (KAGs), 8 Pensionskassen, 8 crypto-asset service providers, 7 corporate provision funds (Vorsorgekassen) and 6 payment institutions.

838 entities in total.

Four hundred and twenty-seven credit institutions is a striking number for a country of Austria's size, and it is the structural fact that defines the market: the sector is fragmented across three pillars, joint-stock banks, and the Raiffeisen and Sparkassen sectors, each organised around a central institution. Most of those 427 are small, sector-affiliated banks. Entities can be looked up in the FMA company database.

How is banking supervision split between the FMA and the OeNB?

The OeNB does macro supervision: monitoring the stability of the financial market as a whole, payment and settlement system oversight, and banking sector analysis. The FMA does micro supervision: monitoring individual institutions, issuing binding standards and regulations, granting and withdrawing licences, removing directors, and imposing administrative penalties (FMA, financial market supervision in Austria). The practical consequence: an on-site inspection is likely to be staffed by the OeNB, but the decision that follows it comes from the FMA. Austrian banks classified as significant under the Single Supervisory Mechanism feed into the ECB's Joint Supervisory Teams too; the rest stay under national supervision, the FMA working with the OeNB.

Which regulations does the FMA enforce?

The Austrian acts: BWG (banking), VAG 2016 (insurance), WAG 2018 (securities services), InvFG 2011 (UCITS), AIFMG (alternative investment funds), ZaDiG 2018 (payment services) and FM-GwG (anti-money laundering), under which the FMA supervises identity verification and cash-flow transparency obligations.

On EU files, the FMA is the Austrian competent authority for DORA, which has applied to almost all its supervised entities since 17 January 2025 (FMA on DORA), and for MiCA, designated through the MiCA-Vollzugsgesetz passed by the Nationalrat on 3 July 2024 and in force since 20 July 2024 (FMA on MiCAR). Crypto-asset service provider applications have been accepted since 1 October 2024 and authorised services since 30 December 2024.

What does the FMA publish, and how often?

An annual report; Facts and Figures, Trends and Strategies, published annually since 2015 and carrying the FMA's supervisory priorities and inspection focus since 2018; circulars (Rundschreiben), issued as needed rather than on a calendar, the most recent listed is 02/2025 on residential real estate lending, dated 26 June 2025; minimum standards and guides; and a high volume of investor warnings, of which the archive holds 1,233 across all years. Press releases run at several a month. There is an RSS feed covering publications, press releases and warnings. One useful practice change: from the 2025 edition, the FMA publishes its annual report data tables as a spreadsheet alongside the PDF.

What does the FMA's enforcement look like?

Two distinct streams, and the loud one is not the large one. In 2025 the FMA concluded 60 administrative penalty proceedings totalling €2.7 million in fines, with a maximum single penalty of €460,000, and recorded 13 new licences granted against 17 licences expired or withdrawn (FMA Annual Report 2025). Separately, it issues investor warnings continuously, at least 50 in 2026 up to early August, counted from the public archive, which holds 1,233 warnings across all years (FMA warnings). This is the FMA's most visible output by volume and mostly concerns unauthorised providers rather than its supervised population.

Set against BaFin's €80.9 million in 2025 fines, the FMA's €2.7 million reflects both a smaller market and a different enforcement posture.

What changes for a mid-sized institution?

Structure more than rules.

With 427 credit institutions, most Austrian banks are small and sector-affiliated, and belong to institutional protection schemes within the Raiffeisen or Sparkassen sectors, which changes how capital and liquidity requirements are met in practice. Supervision for these institutions is national, the FMA with the OeNB, rather than ECB-led. The DORA calendar, though, is the same for almost every supervised entity regardless of size: the register of information obligation applied to nearly all of them from 17 January 2025.