S-Bank's board of directors is under investigation by the Financial Supervisory Authority (FIN-FSA), probing into their suitability, reliability, and operational practices, according to Helsingin Sanomat. The regulatory body is also scrutinising the competence of the bank's executive management.
The large-scale investigation comes after S-Bank was reprimanded by the Financial Supervisory Authority several times between 2019 and 2022. In 2020, the bank was warned by the Data Protection Ombudsman for a significant data security issue with the bank's mobile bank service.
In 2022, S-Bank disclosed a serious data breach that resulted in customers' account information being compromised. Customers' logins were used by fraudsters to access accounts with the social insurance institution Kela and the state's umbrella login for public services and registrations, Suomi.fi.
S-Bank provided a statement to the regulator at the end of September 2022, but the following month, the authority made a request for further clarification.
The Financial Supervisory Authority urged S-Bank to supplement its previous report with an assessment of the reliability, suitability, and professional competence of its board. According to the authority, recurring administrative sanctions indicated deficiencies in the bank's governance and management.
Financial Supervisory Authority informed S-Bank that it had observed the board members to be "very busy" in their roles and wanted the bank to pay further attention to the board's compliance with conflict of interest requirements.
The financial authority is yet to reach conclusions on S-Bank's inspection and the bank has until the end of 2023 to implement any recommendations or directives given by FIN-FSA so far.
S-Bank manages deposits worth 7.9 billion euros and assets totalling 6 billion euros for its 3.2 million customers. Last month, the bank announced a deal to acquire Swedish bank Handelsbanken's asset management and investment services operations in Finland.
