Bank of Italy, following audits conducted in autumn 2021, found “significant” deficiencies in compliance with the anti-money laundering legislation by the mobile bank, also known only as N26, with headquarters in Germany, but operating in Italy.
Consequently, the Bank of Italy imposed a ban on the Italian branch of N26 from acquiring new customers, both with the opening of new accounts or ongoing relationships and also for so-called operations “Occasional”. N26 had recently announced that it would offer its customers products and services also in the virtual currency sector. The press release from the Bank of Italy also required him not to offer new products or services, citing virtual currencies as an example.
N26 has made it known, through a press release, that the sanctions and limiting operations will have no impact on existing Italian customers, whose accounts will continue to be operational. He also made it known that he immediately took all the necessary steps to remedy the shortcomings found.
The bank also confirmed that in recent months it has made important investments in anti-money laundering, increasing the staff dedicated to governance and operational processes, the development of the IT infrastructure and machine learning models, as well as having implemented a greater monitoring of transactions.
Interventions which, however, apparently were deemed insufficient or late by the Bank of Italy.
