Digital Bank N26 Names CEO and Faces New Sanctions

German digital bank N26 has chosen a chief executive amid new regulatory sanctions.

Mike Dargan, currently group executive board member for UBS, will become N26’s new CEO starting in April 2026, pending regulatory approval, the company announced Monday (Dec. 15).

“Dargan is a seasoned international banking executive with more than 25 years of leadership experience across financial services, technology and transformation,” N26 said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.

“Driven by a deep commitment to customer-orientation he shaped technology to meaningfully improve clients’ experiences. As group chief operations and technology officer at UBS, he led major global digitization initiatives focused on delivering benefits for customers.”

Dargan will replace N26 Co-Founder Maximilian Tayenthal and temporary CEO Marcus W. Mosen. Prior to joining UBS in 2016, he held executive roles for Standard Chartered Bank and Merrill Lynch, the release added.

“As we look to the next decade, I am confident to step back and put N26 in the very capable hands of Mike,” said Tayenthal, who founded the company with Valentin Stalf.

“Beyond his extensive experience combining banking, technology and digital transformation, he is also fully committed to the N26 vision, making him the ideal person to lead N26 into its next stage of development.”

The announcement came as Germany’s financial watchdog, BaFin, imposed new sanctions on N26, heightening pressure on the FinTech to update its governance and risk controls.

As the Financial Times (FT) report, the regulator has ordered N26 to pause new mortgage lending in the Netherlands, while also increasing capital requirements linked to that business. BaFin also pointed out deficiencies in N26’s risk management and complaints handling, and appointed a special monitor for remedial measures.

N26 told the FT it was working closely with regulators and the special monitor, and that its workers were implementing governance and operational measures to allow for “coordinated and timely execution” as part of a wider overhaul of controls, processes and structures.

The news comes four months after an earlier FT report that N26 investors were lobbying to remove its co-founders and replace them with Mosen as interim CEO. This came after BaFin threatened new sanctions related to risk management shortcomings, barely a year after easing restrictions tied to compliance failures.