Customers there have been very disappointed recently, said CEO Christian Sewing at a banking conference in Frankfurt on Wednesday. "We have not lived up to our responsibility here." Deutsche Bank must now work all the harder to quickly and completely rectify the problems and regain trust.
The head of the German financial supervisory authority Bafin, Mark Branson, had recently insisted that the IT problems be rectified quickly. It is a unique situation how many complaints there are about a single institution. He recently told the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" newspaper that it was no longer just an IT migration problem, but that there were other far-reaching disruptions in customer service.
Deutsche Bank had gradually taken over Postbank since 2009 and announced in July that it had completed the IT migration of Postbank customers in a final phase. According to the bank, this was one of the largest and most complex IT migration projects in the European banking sector.
However, there were considerable problems with the project called "Unity". At times, customers were unable to access their accounts. Customer service was barely available. According to BaFin, there were numerous complaints from customers. BaFin is investigating these as part of its mandate to protect the collective interests of consumers and will impose measures if necessary, the financial supervisory authority announced. At the end of August, the NRW consumer advice center had pointed out massive organizational deficiencies at Postbank in dealing with seized accounts and lodged a supervisory complaint with the authority.
(Report by Frank Siebelt, edited by Myria Mildenberger If you have any queries, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)
