N26’s chief regulatory officer Jan Stechele to step down to “pursue new opportunities”
Jan Stechele, chief regulatory officer (CRO) at German neobank N26, is set to step down from his role at the end of September to “pursue new opportunities outside N26”, according to the company’s co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf.
Jan Stechele to step down as N26’s chief regulatory officer
Stechele joined N26 as director of banking excellence in 2022 and was also appointed to the N26 management board in an interim capacity in April 2023, when he took over as interim chief risk officer following the departure of the company’s previous chief risk and banking officer Thomas Grosse, who quit the firm for personal reasons.
Carina Kozole was appointed to the chief risk officer role on a permanent basis in July 2023, and Stalf writes on LinkedIn that Kozole will now also “take over Jan’s duties going forward”.
Stechele joined the company from digital lendtech Creditshelf, where he served as chief product officer. Prior to that, he spent over 13 years at Bayerische Landesbank, advancing to the role of SVP and head of marketing and sustainability management.
Speaking on Stechele’s tenure at the digital challenger, Stalf states that his teams have “played a crucial role in bringing compliance, risk management and AML to a new level at N26”.
In May this year, the neobank received a €9.2 million fine from the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), with the German regulator claiming the company “systematically submitted suspected money laundering reports late in 2022”.
In a statement on the fine, N26 said that it has implemented “numerous measures to further improve reporting processes” since 2022, including making an €80 million investment into its personnel and technical infrastructure “to maintain the highest industry standards in combating financial crime and money laundering”.
