Polish regulator upheld XTB PLN 20m fine in final administrative decision of August 2026

What happened

On 30 March 2026, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) issued a decision imposing a PLN 20 million administrative fine on Warsaw-based XTB S.A. The authority published its explanation on 13 April 2026.

The findings concern controls and customer information used mainly between January 2022 and August or September 2023. They do not describe a platform outage, a withdrawal freeze, or missing client funds.

What the regulator found

KNF said XTB did not properly establish whether customers had the knowledge and experience needed to understand the risks of its brokerage services and financial instruments. It said the questionnaires and assessment method could treat CFDs as appropriate based partly on experience with less complex instruments.

The decision also cited inadequate target-market definitions, shortcomings in identifying potential conflicts connected with XTB's client-facing HOT list, and unreliable or misleading information about financial instruments and the full risks associated with CFDs.

XTB's position and current status

In its first-quarter 2026 preliminary results, XTB recorded PLN 20 million as a cost connected with the decision. The company described the decision as non-final and the expense as a one-off event.

KNF subsequently issued a final administrative decision on 28 August 2026 upholding its decision of 30 March 2026. The KNF notice was updated on 1 September 2026. The outcome is marked resolved here only for the administrative decision; this does not establish that any judicial challenge has been concluded or that the fine has been paid.

Scope

The KNF decision concerns XTB S.A. and the specific periods and practices it describes. It should not be read as a finding about every XTB group entity, every product, or current controls outside the cited periods.