Solaris, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider based in Germany, has announced a significant strategic shift. The move aims to transform Solaris into one of Europe’s pioneering AI-native banks.

This transformation follows the appointment of the new management team headed by CEO Steffen Jentsch and is supported by SBI Group, the Japanese financial conglomerate that holds a majority stake in Solaris.

The company’s strategy hinges on its existing full banking license in Germany, its API-driven embedded finance platform, and its decade-long experience in the BaaS sector. Solaris plans to restructure and largely automate its banking processes using artificial intelligence (AI). In this new model, AI will manage operational tasks while human oversight ensures control and governance.

Business Model and Partner Focus

Solaris intends to align its business model with standardised and reusable modules within its financial platform. The company is also redefining key end-to-end processes. A significant part of this strategy involves deepening existing partnerships, such as those with ADAC and Boerse Stuttgart Group. These collaborations will involve developing data and AI-driven financial services tailored to partners.

The timing of the transformation coincides with the EU’s regulatory landscape, including the AI Act and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which are seen as creating an appropriate framework for this development.

Commenting on these changes, Steffen Jentsch, CEO of Solaris, emphasized that the company is advancing beyond cloud-based API banking by integrating AI. Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director and CEO of SBI Holdings, highlighted Solaris as a key element of SBI’s central European strategy—a fully licensed German bank with an API-based architecture providing access to the European Economic Area.