Sutor Bank

The Sutor banking platform has four service lines: Investment-as-a-Service, accounts and payments, a lending platform and Crypto-as-a-Service. Partners can offer managed securities accounts as a white label or under the Sutor brand, and API accounts for retail and business customers. Platforms, marketplaces, crowdfunding models and payment institutions use trust accounts of the bank, and the lending line covers consumer and business loans with automated scoring.

Sutor Bank has worked with fintech partners and start-ups since 2013 and is one of the licensed banks behind banking-as-a-service in Germany. For the new state-subsidized pension depot in Germany, the bank offers partners a white-label solution (in German) that covers product certification, allowance management and tax handling. Together with partners it has already built Riester and Rürup pension products and signed more than 50,000 customer contracts.

The private banking arm of Sutor Bank calls itself a private bank for everyone and serves clients with smaller and larger assets as well as foundations. Its asset managers invest in broadly diversified, long-term portfolios and follow the Sutor investment code, which goes back to the founder and his focus on real assets. A separate foundation office helps founders set up and manage a foundation and invests its assets. Mathias Beil heads private banking at Sutor Bank and publishes regular market commentary on bonds and equities.

The bank was entered in the commercial register in Hamburg on 10 March 1921 as Max Heinr. Sutor oHG. Max Heinrich Sutor was a Hamburg merchant in the South America trade, and his first clients were business partners who trusted him with their money. His son Werner Sutor joined in 1940, became a partner in 1957 and founded the Sutor foundation for architecture and technology in 1984 together with his sister Clara Sutor.

From 1989 the bank built savings plans as a business line of its own and developed its first fund savings plans for small savers together with financial sales firms. Walter Ihlow succeeded Werner Sutor as managing director in 1991, and Axel Wendt joined him in 1997. The legal name of the bank today is Sutor Bank GmbH, and it has used a new corporate design since 2026.

Sutor Bank GmbH has four managing directors: Robert Freitag, Thomas Meier, Hartmut Giesen and Daniel Iskam. Robert Freitag has led the bank since 2002 and Thomas Meier since 2005, and the management was expanded in 2025. Hartmut Giesen speaks for the bank on the banking platform, its crypto services and the new pension depot.

The Swiss Hypothekarbank Lenzburg holds a stake of 9.9 percent in Sutor Bank (in German). Both banks plan new banking-as-a-service products on Finstar, the open banking and core banking platform of Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, which adds account and card products to the offer of Sutor Bank. Gerhard Hanhart, chairman of the board of directors of the Swiss bank, called the investment a step to grow its business beyond Switzerland.

Sutor Bank is a CRR credit institution under the supervision of BaFin and a member of the Association of German Banks and of the deposit protection fund of the private banks. As a credit institution it needs no separate crypto license and may offer crypto services after a notification under Article 60 of MiCA. BaFin confirmed that notification for executing crypto orders for clients on 18 December 2025, which lets the bank offer the service across the EU through passporting.

Together with its partner JustTrade, Sutor Bank enables trading in more than 60 crypto assets and provides the payment infrastructure behind it. In the early years of the crypto market the bank already supported first stablecoin applications and crypto savings plans.

Partners of the Sutor banking platform include the neo-broker JustTrade, Fintiba, which provides blocked accounts for international students, and the crypto trading platform Bitvavo. The savings platform Raisin and the robo-advisor growney are also reference clients, and Sutor Bank keeps separate fund lists for both in its fund universe. Further partners are financial sales firms, independent fee-based advisers and asset managers who use the bank as their custodian.

The head office of Sutor Bank GmbH is at Hermannstraße 46 in 20095 Hamburg, and the bank is entered in the commercial register of the Hamburg district court under HRB 178357. Through its platform partners and its own digital products, Sutor Bank is part of the fintech scene in Hamburg.