The Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht is Germany's federal financial supervisory authority. Formed in 2002 by merging the separate banking, insurance and securities supervisors, it is an integrated regulator covering all three sectors. It supervises banks jointly with the Deutsche Bundesbank, and for significant institutions it works within the ECB's Single Supervisory Mechanism rather than acting alone.
What BaFin publishes
- Rundschreiben (circulars), including the MaRisk minimum risk-management requirements
- The IT-supervisory requirement sets — BAIT, VAIT, KAIT and ZAIT — for banks, insurers, asset managers and payment institutions
- Merkblätter (guidance notices) and Auslegungsentscheidungen (interpretive decisions), which explain when an activity becomes a licensable one
- Consultations, general administrative acts (Allgemeinverfügungen) and product intervention measures
- The BaFinJournal, plus warnings and the public register of unauthorised providers
Why it matters for compliance teams
German supervision leans heavily on interpretive material. Whether an activity requires authorisation under the KWG, the ZAG or the KAGB is frequently settled by a Merkblatt or an Auslegungsentscheidung rather than by the statute, and MaRisk together with the xAIT circulars effectively define what adequate governance and IT risk management look like for a German-regulated firm — including the way DORA is being absorbed into that existing structure.
Seqlense DOC indexes BaFin circulars, guidance notices and interpretive decisions in full text, in German and alongside the EU-level instruments they implement, so a cross-border team can compare the German expectation against the European baseline directly.