Solarisbank gets new requirements from Bafin

Bafin sent a special examiner to Solarisbank as recently as January. Now the federal financial regulator is taking further action 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 proper business organization, Bafin announced in a statement. It had sent a special auditor to the bank as recently as January(we reported).

Bafin decided on both conditions on the basis of a banking supervisory audit in 2020, which identified compliance deficiencies. A risk analysis on this had been decided at the end of December last year. Solarisbank already responded to the measures. "With a core capital ratio of just under 30 percent as of the end of 2021, Solarisbank meets the additional capital requirements," a spokesman for the institution told the Handelsblatt.

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