I don't meant to single you out but where is this lack of understanding of how EMIs work coming from? Has anyone actually looked into how EMIs are regulated, supervised, and audited?
I don't want to make it sound like EMIs are suitable for storing wealth. But it's disappointing to see so many members being so confidently incorrect. This forum flourishes when we all learn from each other.
Banks in many jurisdictions offer a deposit insurance of somewhere in range of 100,000︀ – 250,000 USD/EUR per person per bank. The exact implementation varies, but this security often︁ doesn't come from the bank but rather from the government. Banks pay into a pool︂ which is used to pay out deposit insurances, before dipping into the funds from the︃ failed bank. If a bank fails in a jurisdiction with a 100,000 EUR deposit guarantee︄ and you have 100,001 EUR in that bank, you can say goodbye that to that︅ 1 EUR.
EMIs, on the other hand, are required to maintain 100% reserves. Whatever your︆ and everyone else's balances are, they have in a bank account somewhere. This is a︇ mixed blessing. It means they can only make money from charging fees and cannot make︈ money from lending or fractional reserve banking. The upside is that if an EMI fails,︉ they are holding 100% of the e-money they have issued in reserves and you will︊ be able to get your funds back.
The EMIs store their funds with other banks︋ in special Client Funds account, whose balances the bank may not use for lending. This︌ is one reason why most banks don't want to work with EMIs, since they are︍ very limited in their ability to earn money from offering bank services to EMIs.