Strangers have stolen highly confidential data from asset manager Scalable Capital.
The Munich start-up speaks of a "data protection incident" and weighs it down.
Scalable Capital
is one of the most successful German fintechs.
But during the Corona crisis, the
asset manager
showed
a big
minus
.
Now a data leak is likely
to increase
the pressure on the Munich
start-up
.
Munich -
Scalable Capital
,
the largest German online asset manager, has
suffered
a serious data breach.
This emerges from a cumbersome customer letter from
Scalable
, which Merkur.de has.
After that, there was an "unlawful access" to strictly confidential customer data in the document archive.
In addition to personal details such as contact information, securities accounts, tax identification numbers, connections to reference accounts at house banks and ID data are said to have been read out, a company spokeswoman said on request.
According to Scalable, around
20,000 customers are
affected
by the data leak
.
That would be every fifth customer of the Munich start-up.
Secure yourself a 25 euro premium for your deposit in the scalable broker.
Registration and the conditions of participation are available here: https: //t.co/KGnDHLCupT pic.twitter.com/i8LoAY7wVq
- Scalable Capital 🇩🇪 (@ScalableCapDACH) October 9, 2020
Scalable Capital engages Bafin, data protection officers, public prosecutors and the Bundesbank
According to
Scalable
, the data breach was discovered last Friday, October 16.
All "necessary measures have been taken to rule out further unlawful access to the digital document archive," it said.
The responsible supervisory authorities have been informed.
These included the financial services
regulator Bafin
, the
Bundesbank
and the
Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision
.
In addition, a
complaint was filed
with the
public prosecutor
.
The company spokeswoman assured the customer assets were "at no point" at risk.
According to initial findings, the access to the customer data was apparently carried out with extensive insider knowledge.
According to the current state of knowledge, there is no externally exploitable security gap.
However, the company refused to provide any further information, referring to the ongoing investigation.
Scalable Capital: Data breach increases pressure on the start-up
Scalable is the largest German
robo-advisor
.
The term Robo-Advisor is derived from the English words Robot and Advisor.
With robo advisors, investors invest in ETFs.
These funds usually track an index such as the Dax.
The selection of suitable funds is based on your own risk profile and corresponding algorithms and is largely automated.
This type of investment is becoming more and more popular worldwide.
In the USA alone, assets under management by robo-advisors are already several hundred billion dollars.
Scalable Capital says it
manages over two billion euros.
Since June,
Scalable
customers have been able
to trade stocks, ETFs and funds themselves.
Only at the end of July did the start-up complete another financing round of 50 million euros.
That corresponds to an enterprise value of 400 million euros.
Behind the robo-advisor are, among others,
Holtzbrinck Ventures
,
Tengelmann Ventures
and BlackRock.
The US group is the largest capital investor and ETF provider in the world.
The latest data breach is likely to further increase the pressure on the robo-advisor.
During the Corona crisis, Scalable had
the worst performance of the robo-advisors examined,
according to an evaluation by the Hamburg industry magazine
Private Banking,
with a minus of around 18 percent.