A delegation of senior Cypriot bank executives spent two days in Brussels this week presenting the island’s banking sector to EU institutions, anchoring a decade-of-reform pitch in capital, liquidity and asset-quality figures that beat European averages. The Association of Cyprus Banks led the visit, with the deputy chief executives of Bank of Cyprus and Eurobank Cyprus and the chief executive of Alpha Bank Cyprus joining ACB director general Marios Skandalis.
The group met at Bloomberg’s Brussels headquarters and the European Parliament, broadening a campaign that until now has run mostly in the United States, where the ACB’s roadshows have been reversing Cyprus’s reputation as a financial centre tied to ‘grey areas’ and weak money-laundering controls. The bankers’ case rested on the Central Bank of Cyprus’s 2025 annual report, which set out the indicators that have come to define the post-crisis Cypriot lender.
The Delegation That Pitched Brussels
In Brussels this week, the Association of Cyprus Banks dispatched a four-person delegation, the senior-most representatives of the country’s three systemic banks. ACB director general Marios Skandalis headed the group, with Bank of Cyprus deputy chief executive Charis Pouangare, Eurobank Limited Cyprus deputy chief executive Haris Hambakis and Alpha Bank Cyprus chief executive Miltos Michaelas completing the lineup. The four carried the same brief: rebuild Cyprus’s standing in European financial centres on the back of a decade of post-crisis reform.
Bloomberg’s Brussels office and the European Parliament anchored the trip’s programme, with the delegation holding sessions at both over the two-day window. A full account of the visit lists the four executives as the core of the trip, with central bank officials, embassy representatives and institutional stakeholders joining the meetings. The Brussels feedback reflected a broader and more favourable perception of Cyprus’s banking industry than the association had encountered in earlier outreach, the ACB said. The two-day sweep was modelled on the ACB’s earlier US roadshows, which have used a similar full-institutional approach since 2017.
- Marios Skandalis, Director General, Association of Cyprus Banks
- Charis Pouangare, Deputy Chief Executive, Bank of Cyprus
- Haris Hambakis, Deputy Chief Executive, Eurobank Limited Cyprus
- Miltos Michaelas, Chief Executive, Alpha Bank Cyprus
The Numbers That Did the Talking
Armed with figures from the Central Bank of Cyprus’s 2025 annual report, the bankers walked Brussels through the underlying dataset for almost every chart they showed. The presentation at Bloomberg covered eight areas the ACB has treated as the post-crisis checklist: corporate governance, anti-money-laundering rules, KYC procedures, capital adequacy, non-performing loans, liquidity, cost-to-income ratios and new lending. KNEWS, which provided the most detailed account of the visit, said the figures shown in Brussels broadly matched those in the 2025 annual report, with no fresh release issued in parallel. The Central Bank’s report, in turn, gave the bankers a publicly verifiable backbone for the narrative they were selling. The data was also the basis for the Brussels pitch’s central claim: that Cyprus’s banks are no longer the fragile, AML-scarred lenders of the post-2013 cleanup years.
- Corporate governance
- Anti-money-laundering rules
- KYC procedures
- Capital adequacy
- Non-performing loans
- Liquidity
- Cost-to-income ratios
- New lending
At the top of the pitch sits capital adequacy. The Common Equity Tier 1 ratio, the measure of how much loss-absorbing equity a bank holds against its risk-weighted assets, stood at 25.8% at the end of December 2025, compared with a European average of 16.3%. The liquidity coverage ratio reached 319% at the same date, well above the 100% regulatory floor and far above the EU’s 163% average.
Asset quality, the metric that most defined Cyprus’s banking crisis, has now turned. Non-performing exposures fell to 3.2% of total loans at end-2025, down from 6.2% a year earlier, a continued drop in Cypriot non-performing loans that has been a central part of the sector’s recovery story. Under the European Banking Authority’s methodology, the ratio dropped to 1.6%, below the EU average of 1.8% for the first time on record. Return on equity reached 14.2% in 2025 against an EU average of 10.4%, with net interest margin at 2.6% and cost-to-income at 41%, both beating European benchmarks of 1.6% and 53.3%, respectively.
| Indicator (end-2025) | Cyprus | EU average |
|---|---|---|
| CET1 capital ratio | 25.8% | 16.3% |
| Liquidity coverage ratio | 319% | 163% |
| NPE ratio (EBA methodology) | 1.6% | 1.8% |
| Return on equity | 14.2% | 10.4% |
| Net interest margin | 2.6% | 1.6% |
| Cost-to-income ratio | 41% | 53.3% |
A Decade of Reforms, Now in a Brussels Frame
Turning point, not routine trip: the Association of Cyprus Banks framed the Brussels visit as a culmination of its decade-of-reform work. The association described the development as a new chapter in the transformation of the banking sector following a decade of reforms and restructuring, a phrase the ACB used to position the visit as a milestone rather than a status update. Until now, the international narrative around Cyprus’s lenders has been dominated by anti-money-laundering, regulatory compliance and sanctions questions, the same topics the ACB’s earlier US roadshows were built to address. In Brussels, the bankers stretched the conversation past compliance and into the broader economy: growth rates, low unemployment, high employment, steadily declining public debt and the improved standing of Cypriot banks. The trip’s pattern mirrored the shift the ACB has named in its public framing.
The visit’s other selling point is the credit-rating story. All four major rating agencies have either upgraded Cyprus or reaffirmed positive assessments in recent reviews, a sweep the bankers used to anchor the broader resilience, governance and fundamentals pitch. The ACB’s longer-term Brussels footprint is anchored in its European Banking Federation membership, a body the association has belonged to since 2004 as one of its listed European affiliations, and the ratings sweep gave the bankers a way to put that membership to work, with the 14.2% return on equity the headline profitability number against an EU average of 10.4%.
The Brussels Visit Replays the 2017 US Playbook
Back in 2017, Cyprus hired the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop to repair the country’s reputation among American banks. The push, run as a series of investor roadshows across the United States, was designed to address a narrow set of concerns and is the template the Brussels visit is now replaying.
That effort was considered successful: it attracted investment from the United States and lifted the number of correspondent banks dealing in dollars to five, restoring a key channel for US-currency transactions that had frayed after the financial crisis. The US roadshows had two stated goals, both of which are surfacing again in the Brussels visit. The first was to reverse the perception of Cyprus as a financial centre associated with so-called grey areas and insufficient money-laundering controls, the reputational baggage left over from the crisis years. The second was to secure and strengthen correspondent banking relationships with major American banks, which the ACB described as essential for transactions denominated in US dollars.
In Brussels, the association is running the same playbook on European institutions, with the European Parliament and Bloomberg’s Brussels office taking the role that US banks and American media played in the earlier campaign. The shift is in emphasis, the ACB said, moving from defending the sector’s reputation to promoting the broader achievements of Cyprus’s banks and the wider economy. The European Parliament meetings, which sat alongside the Bloomberg events, expanded the visit’s reach beyond a single venue, and the meetings’ institutional weight gave the trip a profile the US roadshows never had in Brussels. The bankers’ Brussels targets include parliamentary committees and European institutional stakeholders, the same set the ACB’s US roadshows have courted since 2017. The two-day window left little time for follow-up, but it cleared the room the ACB needed to clear.
The Past Cyprus Cannot Leave Behind
Compliance story settled, the data the bankers carried to Brussels said. Cyprus is among the countries that apply sanctions lists issued by US, UK and EU authorities as soon as they are published, a position the ACB highlighted in its meetings. The country has tightened its anti-money-laundering framework, strengthened its KYC procedures, cleaned up bank balance sheets and rebuilt governance over the past decade.
The reputation the roadshow is trying to retire still surfaces in the source material. The country has, in the past, come under international scrutiny over cases involving investments, sanctions, and concerns about access to the financial system by high-risk individuals who, in some cases, should not have been admitted, the KNEWS account of the visit noted.
The ACB’s earlier US missions were designed to address the same concerns, framed as a fight against the ‘grey areas’ perception and a push to restore US-dollar correspondent banking. The roadshow’s second stated objective, securing and strengthening correspondent banking relationships with major American banks, was treated as essential for US-dollar transactions, the channel that lets Cypriot importers and exporters settle trade in dollars. In Brussels, the bankers are carrying the same pitch to European institutions, with the broader-economy narrative now layered on top of the compliance story. The shift is more rhetorical than substantive, the bankers said: the AML and KYC work continues in parallel, the difference is what gets talked about first.
More favourable than in earlier outreach, the Brussels feedback gave the ACB something it had not seen in years. That perception, the association said, now extends past the anti-money-laundering, regulatory-compliance and sanctions issues that had traditionally dominated discussions in previous years, a shift the ACB pointed to as evidence that the decade of reforms is being read abroad as it is being read at home. The bankers returned to Nicosia with that read on the record.
What Brussels Is Being Asked to Accept
Update the image, the bankers asked of Brussels on their way out. The pitch rests on three pillars the ACB named in its meetings: resilience, stronger governance and improved financial fundamentals, with the CET1, liquidity and asset-quality numbers standing in as the receipts. The visit, in the association’s framing, marks a shift from defending the sector’s reputation to promoting it, a change of posture the ACB linked to a decade of reforms the country’s banks have already absorbed. The Brussels trip is the European leg of that pitch, the same architecture the ACB built for the United States a decade ago.
The broader bet is that the European side of the roadshow will produce the same result as the US one did, lifting Cyprus’s standing in the financial centres that handle the country’s cross-border business. The European Parliament meetings, the Bloomberg events and the institutional roundtables are the analogues of the 2017 US campaign, and the ACB will measure the trip against the same yardstick: more correspondent relationships, more investment, and a thinner AML overhang. The bankers returned to Nicosia with numbers that beat European averages.
Disclaimer: This article discusses publicly reported banking sector statistics from the Central Bank of Cyprus and a press outreach by the Association of Cyprus Banks. It is informational only and does not constitute financial advice. Readers should consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. Figures reflect the publication date of the underlying sources and may change in subsequent Central Bank of Cyprus releases.
