At the center of the venture is a company called Financial Innovation Holding, co-led by Angelos Filippidis, a former high-ranking Greek banker, and Archimandrite Nikodimos Farmakis, a senior cleric who oversees the Church’s Central Financial Services.
The revelation that a national religious institution is getting involved in the high-stakes, tech-driven world of FinTech banking—spearheaded by figures with complicated histories—has triggered debate not only within ecclesiastical circles but also among financial and political observers.
Financial Innovation Holding was formed in September 2021 and later converted into a public limited company in April 2022. Before the conversion, Filippidis donated half of the company’s shares to the Church of Greece.
Today, the company’s ownership is split between Filippidis, who retains 50%, and the Church, which holds 32%. The remaining shares are divided among Church-affiliated philanthropic and nonprofit entities, including one controlled almost entirely by Farmakis himself.
The company’s mandate is ambitious. According to its official charter, it can invest in a broad range of financial instruments—both in Greece and abroad—and has plans to enter the FinTech sector through technological development, social responsibility programs, and strategic partnerships. It also claims an interest in digital services such as website development and support for e-commerce platforms.
Although the Church has so far refrained from investing capital in the project’s early stages, it hasn’t ruled out future involvement. In January 2025, Financial Innovation Holding’s shareholders approved an €800,000 convertible bond issuance, with bonds offered privately to selected investors. The conversion terms of the bond are directly tied to whether the company manages to raise at least €18 million—a figure that matches the minimum capital required by EU law to launch a licensed credit institution. If the company reaches that threshold, each bond would convert into one share at €150 per share. If not, each bond would instead convert into ten shares at just €2 each.
The deadline for existing shareholders to exercise preemptive rights to purchase the bonds passed in early February 2025. After that, any unsold bonds were at the discretion of the board to allocate elsewhere. Reports suggest the Church of Cyprus may have been approached to purchase these bonds, but so far, neither the Church nor the company has confirmed such discussions. When asked by Greek news outlet Dnews.gr for an update on the bond issuance, Filippidis simply stated that there was “nothing to announce.”
Despite the excitement surrounding the venture’s promise of a fully digital bank—one with no physical branches but offering all the services of a traditional financial institution—there’s a critical regulatory hurdle: approval from the Bank of Greece. Insiders say the company plans to submit its licensing application by May or June. However, securing a license will not be easy. Under EU law, entities seeking to establish a bank must meet rigorous criteria regarding transparency, capital adequacy, and the trustworthiness of their shareholders and executives.
Whether Angelos Filippidis and Nikodimos Farmakis will meet these “fit and proper” standards is an open—and increasingly pressing—question. Filippidis, for his part, has a complicated past. In 2020, he was acquitted by the Athens Court of Appeals in a high-profile corruption case linked to his time as head of the now-defunct Hellenic Postbank. The charges had once led to his arrest in Turkey and a brief stint in prison. While other charges against him were later dropped, this happened largely because of a controversial amendment to the penal code introduced by the Greek government in 2019, which made it harder to prosecute bankers for breach of trust unless their own institutions filed formal complaints. In Filippidis’s case, the complaint from the court-appointed liquidator came one day too late—rendering the entire prosecution invalid. The person who oversaw the liquidation process at the time, Christina Papakonstantinou, is now the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Greece—the very institution that will now decide whether to license the bank and approve Filippidis’s role in it.
Farmakis’s background is no less fraught with controversy. In 2005, he became a central figure in a transnational scandal that made headlines in both Greece and Israel, involving covert attempts to sway the outcome of the Patriarchal election in Jerusalem. At the heart of the uproar was his arrest by Israeli authorities for illegal possession of a firearm—a charge that cast a long shadow over his role within the Church and raised troubling questions about the nature of his involvement in the political maneuverings within the Orthodox world.
In 2021, Farmakis reemerged in a different kind of financial drama. He was linked to the Dutch firm i3CP that attempted to acquire the then struggling Romanian insurance company, City Insurance. The Church of Greece was reported to have supported i3CP financially with a minority stake, but the acquisition failed due to a lack of the necessary €150 million in capital. More recently, Farmakis was again in the spotlight after it emerged that he had provided letters of gratitude to a controversial Turkish businessman who was later granted honorary Greek citizenship—letters that were presented as part of the businessman’s naturalization file. According to the Greek Interior Ministry, the businessman had donated €750,000 to Church-run institutions.
Farmakis is currently managing two real estate tenders involving high-value Church properties in the affluent seaside suburb of Vouliagmeni, south of Athens. One of the tenders involves leasing a plot of nearly 1,000 square meters for 99 years, with an annual minimum rent of €70,000 and a required participation guarantee of €500,000. The other involves the sale of a three-story apartment building, priced at €4.1 million. Bidders are expected to submit offers by April 4, 2025.
These controversies—and the intense scrutiny surrounding both Filippidis and Farmakis—have led to growing discomfort within the Church itself. Many in its leadership question whether a religious institution should be so deeply involved in a purely commercial and speculative venture like a FinTech bank. Others are openly critical of the credibility, experience, and reputations of the individuals leading the initiative.
With the Bank of Greece expected to weigh in on the project within the coming months, the fate of the Church-backed digital bank remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is that this “unorthodox fusion” of clergy, capital, and code is already testing the boundaries between faith and finance in Greece.
