Solarisbank gets new requirements from Bafin

It was only in January that Bafin sent a special auditor to Solarisbank. Now the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority is taking further measures against the fintech.

The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority Bafin has imposed further regulations on Solarisbank: Accordingly, Neobank must raise additional equity capital. The fintech had violated the requirements for a proper business organization, as Bafin announced in a statement. It had only sent a special auditor to the bank in January(we reported).

Bafin imposed both conditions on the basis of a regulatory audit in 2020, which identified compliance deficiencies. A risk analysis on this was decided at the end of December last year. Solarisbank has already responded to the measures. "With a core capital ratio of just under 30 percent at the end of 2021, Solarisbank meets the additional capital requirements," a spokesperson for the bank told the Handelsblatt.

According to research by financial scene Bafin has imposed measures against financial institutions more frequently in the past two to three years. In 2021 alone, it published twelve decisions and took 19 anonymized measures. Bafin has also already taken measures against other neobanks: in November last year, for example, the financial supervisory authority restricted the growth of N26 to 50,000 new customers per month(we reported).