Bafin criticizes customer handling: Postbank chaos costs Deutsche Bank millions
Due to problems with Postbank's IT migration and delayed processing of customer complaints, Deutsche Bank has to pay a fine of eight million euros.
Quick Look
- Bafin has imposed a fine of eight million euros on Deutsche Bank.
- The reason is inadequate organizational precautions when dealing with customer complaints and delayed securities account transfers after the Postbank IT migration in 2023.
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Why It Matters
In 2022 and 2023, Deutsche Bank merged the customer data of Postbank and Deutsche Bank on a common IT platform, which led to massive problems and customer complaints.
The merger of Postbank and Deutsche Bank will cause numerous customer complaints in 2023. According to the financial regulator Bafin, the bank is not reacting quickly enough and is also delaying deposit transfers. Now the Bafin is imposing a fine worth millions.
Deutsche Bank will have to pay a fine of millions in 2023 because of problems with moving Postbank customers to a common IT platform. In doing so, Deutsche Bank violated the Securities Trading Act. The financial regulator Bafin said it imposed a fine of eight million euros on Germany's largest financial institution.
Specifically, in 2023, Deutsche Bank "did not take appropriate organizational precautions to immediately deal with the higher volume of customer complaints that arose from the migration of customer data," said the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bafin). In addition, the bank did not immediately execute orders to transfer the securities account.
Starting at Easter 2022, Deutsche Bank brought together data from twelve million Postbank customers and seven million Deutsche Bank customers in Germany on a common platform in four waves (“Project Unity”).
Depot transfer causes trouble
In this context, there has been an increasing number of complaints from customers who, for example, were temporarily unable to access their accounts. The second wave of data transfer around New Year's Eve 2022/2023 in particular caused anger among customers, when, among other things, securities depots were affected. At the time, Bafin had complained about “significant impairments in the processing of customer business at Postbank” and had a special representative monitor that Deutsche Bank got the problems under control.
The Bafin has now imposed a fine of 5.5 million euros for the “too slow processing of customer complaints”, and Deutsche Bank has to pay a further 2.5 million euros because it delayed executing orders to transfer the securities account.
"We have comprehensively examined and resolved the problems that existed several years ago in connection with Postbank's IT migration to Deutsche Bank and have continuously improved our processes since then," said a spokesman for the Frankfurt DAX group when asked. Deutsche Bank accepts Bafin's decision.
Open Questions
- Have all affected customers now been compensated?
