Topic Authorisation requirements Exemption from the authorisation requirement
Article from the Annual Report 2016 of the BaFin
Pursuant to section 2 (4) of the Banking Act, BaFin can, on the grounds of certain atypical banking activities, exempt individual companies from the authorisation requirement and from individual provisions of ongoing supervision under the Banking Act. A prerequisite is for exemption is that, in the authority's opinion, the operator does not require supervision. Exemption can be considered, for example, if the banking business activity is carried out in association with a principal activity that is not subject to authorisation and therefore only represents a comparatively low-level auxiliary or ancillary activity.
BaFin exempted 15 companies from supervision for the first time in the year under review (previous year: 13). This takes the number of institutions exempt from the authorisation requirement under the Banking Act at the end of the year to 355.
Foreign credit institutions that want to provide cross-border services in Germany can, in principle, also be exempted. However, this can only be done if, according to BaFin's assessment, the providers are subject to equivalent supervision in their respective home country. In 2016, BaFin granted exemption to 2 foreign credit institutions (previous year: 9).
