More than 11,000 sole proprietors and companies in Serbia banked only with Alta banka
A week before the National Bank of Serbia revoked its licence on 30 October, Alta banka held 23,435 open business accounts. For 9,057 sole proprietors and 2,194 legal entities it was the only open account. Nearly all of them were founded after 2022.
A small share, a concentrated blow
The National Bank of Serbia revoked Alta banka a.d. Beograd's licence on 30 October 2026, and bankruptcy proceedings opened. A business whose only bank it was cannot receive payments or pay its bills until it opens an account elsewhere.
| Sole proprietors | Legal entities | |
|---|---|---|
| Has at least one open account | 348,738 | 199,462 |
| Has an account at Alta banka | 10,386 (3.0%) | 4,333 (2.2%) |
| Alta is the only bank | 9,057 (2.6%) | 2,194 (1.1%) |
| of which founded 2022 or later | 8,892 (98.2%) | 1,970 (89.8%) |
Nationally that is small: 2.6% of sole proprietors and 1.1% of legal entities. But the blow is not spread evenly: 98% of the sole proprietors who banked only with Alta were founded in 2022 or later. Legal entities banking only with Alta are almost all micro or unclassified; only 6 are medium-sized and one is large.
One generation's bank
Before 2022 Alta had almost no sole proprietors for whom it was the only bank. After that, each year's cohort of new sole proprietors had a larger share of its clients, and in 2026 one new sole proprietor in thirteen banked with Alta alone.
IT, design, consulting
The highest shares are in the activities new sole proprietors in Belgrade and Novi Sad chose most after 2022. Two thirds (65.7%) of those who banked only with Alta work in IT, design or consulting. In salons and restaurants, activities of similar size, the share is under 2%.
| Activity (code) | Alta only | All sole proprietors | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other information services (6399) | 301 | 1,628 | 18.5% |
| Design (7410) | 740 | 5,692 | 13.0% |
| Web portals (6312) | 243 | 1,936 | 12.6% |
| Programming (6201) | 1,800 | 16,070 | 11.2% |
| IT consulting (6202) | 398 | 3,541 | 11.2% |
| Other IT services (6209) | 518 | 4,915 | 10.5% |
| Business consulting (7022) | 1,650 | 20,256 | 8.1% |
| Hair and beauty salons (9602) | 251 | 15,201 | 1.7% |
| Restaurants (5610) | 219 | 16,236 | 1.3% |
Stari Grad, Vračar, Novi Sad
In Stari Grad, Alta was the only bank for one sole proprietor in four. Belgrade and Novi Sad together account for 7,471 of the 9,057 affected sole proprietors (82%).
| Municipality | Sole proprietors with an account | Alta only | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belgrade, Stari Grad | 6,982 | 1,673 | 24.0% |
| Belgrade, Vračar | 5,971 | 931 | 15.6% |
| Belgrade, Savski Venac | 3,182 | 363 | 11.4% |
| Novi Sad | 21,181 | 2,057 | 9.7% |
| Belgrade, Novi Beograd | 11,506 | 1,024 | 8.9% |
| Subotica | 4,143 | 288 | 7.0% |
| Belgrade, Palilula | 6,031 | 316 | 5.2% |
| Belgrade, Voždovac | 7,732 | 364 | 4.7% |
| Belgrade, Zvezdara | 8,994 | 313 | 3.5% |
| Belgrade, Zemun | 8,961 | 229 | 2.6% |
These are the same municipalities and activities where new sole proprietorships grew most after 2022 and where, according to APR, Russian-citizen founders concentrated. Account data carries no citizenship, so we do not claim how many of those affected are from Russia. What the data shows is that the closure hit the generation of entrepreneurs that arrived after 2022, and almost no one outside it.
Method
- Accounts: business accounts per entity as of 21–24 October 2026, six to nine days before the revocation. Every account not closed counts as open, including blocked ones: 595 sole proprietors and 271 legal entities already had a blocked Alta account.
- "Only bank" means the entity had no other open account. For entities with four or more accounts at most four are visible, so 263 legal entities and 169 sole proprietors counted as "Alta only" may have other accounts.
- Only entities active in the register are counted. Personal savings and deposits are not covered.
Sources: NBS (Account Register, licence revocation announcement), APR (Business Register, Register of Sole Proprietors), RZS (KD 2010 activity classification). Analysis: pravno.rs.