Frankfurt. The private bank Quirin and its digital asset management subsidiary Quirion are preparing for the attack on the neobrokers. In the future, the bank wants to use the same infrastructure in the brokerage business as its digital competitors Revolut or N26 and invest up to 20 million euros, as Handelsblatt has previously learned.
The bank wants to score points with its new retirement savings account. In order to secure market share, Quirion wants to reimburse Standard Depot customers for all costs - even the hidden ones that are not part of the reported total cost ratio.
Free portfolio management and savings plan management have now become widely accepted among providers. Quirion also handles this for the standard depot. Some providers such as Scalable or Trade Republic also want to waive the product costs for exchange-traded funds (ETF) for customers permanently or until further notice.
The retirement savings account is part of the planned pension reform and is intended to gradually replace the previous Riester pension from next year. Behind this is a government-sponsored securities account with a predefined standard variant and a free variant.
“We reimburse the product costs for the two ETFs and also the additional transaction costs,” says a Quirion spokesman. The latter in particular are rarely mentioned in the discussion. They arise from securities trading in the ETF, but are not included in the total expense ratio and would amount to up to ten basis points (0.1 percentage points).
It is the largest IT project in Quirin's company history. The investment should roughly correspond to a full annual profit for the private bank. In 2025, Quirin earned 18.3 million euros before taxes.
The price war for the 44 million people eligible for funding - and thus potential new customers - is becoming more intense and will only be financially worthwhile for the providers if they succeed in gaining a critical mass of customers who then buy further products.
In addition to the free standard depot, Quirion also offers an individual variant, according to the spokesman.
To make the advance into retirement savings accounts possible at all, Quirin is relying on the technological foundation of the fintech Upvest, which already provides the digital infrastructure of Revolut, N26, Raisin and, for over a year, also of the DKB. “We are starting the retirement savings account in January, which will initially run on the new system,” said Quirin CEO Karl Matthäus Schmidt to the Handelsblatt.
In the second quarter, all of the broker's new customers should be running on the new system. “In the third quarter we will migrate Quirion’s existing customers and then the entire private bank customer base in mid-2028,” says Schmidt. In total, the project affects around 118,000 customers with more than eleven billion euros in assets under management.
“We now have experience with such IT migrations,” says Upvest founder and CEO Martin Kassing. Comparable projects have already been implemented with the interest and savings platform Raisin and the Santander subsidiary Openbank. The BayernLB subsidiary DKB was added last year.
The fintech now has more than 40 customers, ten of which are established financial institutions. “Over the years, we have developed a kind of playbook for migrating end customers and assets and are confident that we can also migrate Quirin and Quirion to our platform in a timely manner and enable further profitable growth,” says Kassing.
According to Schmidt, Quirin is currently still working on IT systems, some of which date back to the 1980s. The decision to change the system was made a year ago. The bank has been thinking about this idea for a lot longer.
The IT project is of great strategic importance for the bank. “For us, it’s about being competitive with neo-brokers like Revolut or Trade Republic,” says Schmidt. This requires a modern IT infrastructure that offers more flexibility. “For example, we would not be able to offer the new retirement savings account with our current IT infrastructure.”
From the provider's perspective, according to Upvest boss Kassing, the challenge with retirement savings accounts lies less in the trading of securities. "But there are complex processes running in the background that have to be handled. Taxes or the correct accounting of state allowances play a big role," says Kassing.
But Quirin doesn't just invest in retirement savings accounts. With the new IT infrastructure, the bank and its broker could process data in real time. “The automatic adjustment of savings plans will be much easier and faster, and the user experience in the app will also be significantly better, for example through better performance reports,” says Schmidt.
“This is the largest IT project in the history of Quirin and we are investing up to 20 million euros in it,” says Schmidt. In the medium term, he naturally hopes that the new IT platform will also result in lower costs. However, costs are not the main focus of this project.
