FRANKFURT/BONN (dpa-AFX) - Deutsche Bank is making progress in working through the problems at Postbank, but does not yet consider itself to have reached its goal in terms of service quality. "By the end of March, as recently announced, we will have overcome the backlog of customer-critical processes, which were also the subject of the Bafin's orders, and are continuing to work on improvements," a Deutsche Bank spokesman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur in Frankfurt.

"At the same time, we are aware that we still have work to do to further improve our customer service and processes in the coming months." Among other things, this includes automating processes "to ensure that processing times in all areas meet expectations and requirements in the long term," the Deutsche Bank spokesperson explained.

Financial supervisory authority monitors progress

In connection with an IT changeover, Postbank received an increasing number of complaints last year from customers who were at times unable to access their accounts or complained about delays in mortgage lending. In addition, there was trouble with seizure protection accounts, in which people in debt can protect a certain balance from seizure so that they have money available for rent and electricity, food and medication, for example.

In September, those responsible at the financial supervisory authority Bafin ran out of patience: Since the turn of the year 2022/2023, "considerable impairments in the processing of customer business at Postbank" have been observed, the authority reprimanded and called on the bank to "remedy the restrictions in customer service as quickly as possible". Since then, a special representative has been monitoring progress on behalf of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bafin).

Bank took longer to resolve the problems

At the end of December, Deutsche Bank admitted that - contrary to what Group CEO Christian Sewing had promised in the fall - not all problems would be resolved by the end of 2023 and that the bank would still have to deal with them in the first months of 2024.

When presenting the balance sheet on February 1, Sewing had said that he assumed that the teams "in the customer-relevant processes (.) will have completed the processes and the missing things that we have not yet tidied up in the first quarter of 2024".

According to information at the time, the chaos at Postbank, which is part of the Group, has cost Germany's largest financial institution 40 million euros to date - not to mention the damage to its image. At the beginning of February, Sewing apologized again for the mishaps: "We have disappointed Postbank customers, we have not provided a good service."

Offer to be thinned out further

However, times are not getting any easier for Postbank customers: Deutsche Bank plans to close up to 250 of the 550 Postbank branches by mid-2026 and also cut staff in the process. This is causing a stir in the current round of collective bargaining and repeated warning strikes: the trade union Verdi is pressing for long-term job security by extending the protection against dismissal until December 31, 2028. So far, Deutsche Bank has promised to refrain from dismissing employees in its private client bank in Germany for operational reasons until the end of September 2024.

The offer will be gradually thinned out further: Postbank financial services, such as cash dispensing, will only be available in Post partner branches until the end of 2025. The bank has "been observing for some time that customers are increasingly conducting their banking transactions online and the proportion of cashless payments is rising", explained Deutsche Bank. As a result, there is less demand for banking services in Deutsche Post's partner branches. The cost-cutting measure affects around 1,800 stationery stores and other retailers. As a result, there will no longer be any Deutsche Post partner stores offering Postbank financial services from 2026.