Jan Kemper will step down as chief financial officer and chief operating officer of German neobank N26, he announced in a post on social media. He only joined the challenger bank in July 2021.
N26, one of Europe’s fastest-growing fintechs with more than eight million clients, is partly owned by Luxembourg-based venture capital firm Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital. Ilavska is among a range of VC firms who collectively have invested 1.8 billion euro in N26.
Kemper said he will be leaving at the end of January 2023 “to focus on my other ventures”.
‘Effective immediately’
N26 said the termination of his involvement was “effective immediately” and that his role will be taken over by co-founder Maximilian Tayenthal, who will continue to serve as managing director.
German daily Handelsblatt said that a personality conflict appeared to have triggered Kemper’s departure. Only a few weeks ago Kemper told the paper that he was pleased with the challenges posed by N26 and said he felt “like a co-pilot with significant operational responsibility.”
In 2021, N26 opened an office in Frankfurt amid talk of a possible public offering. That plan has yet to materialise. Recent changes suggest that this ambition remains alive. In November, N26 agreed to convert its ownership structure from a German GmbH to a stock corporation, an AG, “paving the way for N26 to become an European Company (Societas Europaea - SE) in the future”, the neobank said last month.
Plans to go public would offer VC investors an opportunity to monetize their investment. However so far these have been thwarted by challenges posed by rapid growth. N26 was not able to comply with anti-money laundering requirements. At the end of last year, German federal financial supervisor Bafin imposed stringent measures to make sure that the firm had in place “a proper business organisation” and appointed a special commissioner to monitor the implementation.
In June last year, Bafin had imposed a fine of 4.25 million euro on N26 because it took too long to handle a high number of suspicious transaction reports.