Deutsche Bank's takeover of Postbank hasn't gone well, according to customers

Despite declaring the problems resolved, German financial institution Postbank is receiving complaints about poor service following its migration to a new technology platform. Deutsche Bank won majority control of rival Deutsche Postbank in 2010 to become Germany's biggest retail bank. Postbank then announced plans to move …

[Anonymous Coward]

hehehehe

Ex DB employee though not involved in the project. I do remember its shadow lurking in the background of every IT investment decision from 2010 onward. From memory the migration was cancelled at least twice before coming back as the ultimate zombie project.

[MatthewSt]

Wontfix

"As planned" should probably be examined in a bit more detail. Anything from "works on my machine" to "customers being able to access their accounts wasn't in the spec"

[Lost Neutrino]

The joy of outsourcing

Postbank's IT was managed in-house by the 100% owned Postbank Systems. But in 2020, Deutsche Bank as owner of PB, and in yet another one of their questionable initiatives (see DB's history), sold PB Systems to the Tata Group(*). Nothing wrong with that - staff from Tata and other Indian consulting companies had been running around the Dark Tower of Mordor (DB data and IT centre near Frankfurt) long before the sale. At the same time, various efforts to integrate or migrate PB's IT into DB's systems did not always work out quite as planned...

But whether staff at PB Systems, many of whom had been working there for many years and knew their systems in and out, were really that keen on being shunted off to a new employer? And so, out-the-door the knowledge walked.

Correction to the cited FT article: In 2010 Deutsche Bank did not have full control as it was waiting for regulatory approval to take over the then still "independent" Postbank. I believe approval came later, probably in 2012, (can't be bothered to look it up). It was a funny situation - everybody knew DB would be the new master but officially, PB was still operating and deciding autonomously, with "delicate" interactions between the two organisations, so as not to piss off the regulatory bodies.

* https://www.db.com/news/detail/20201109-deutsche-bank-announces-sale-of-postbank-systems-to-tata-consultancy-services?language_id=1

[Antipode77]

Re: The joy of outsourcing

Out sourcing of a bank's core systems is a really bad idea.

At the Bank where i worked they out sourced all the desktops, but not the core systems.

The consequence was desktop IT stagnation. Only necessary security fixes were done for several years.

Suddenly with new IT management at the bank desktop IT was improving.

It is clear the out sourcing provider tried to minimize their costs, which is why there was no improvemrnt in desktop IT for several years.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: The joy of outsourcing

As someone explained once upon a time (it may even have been on The Register), a bank is first an IT system provider, with a secondary money management activity...

[Charlie Clark]

Awful systems

I recently had to help someone set up online banking for Postbank. Now, I know security is both very important and difficult, but does it really need six letters and at least two different username/password combinations? I work with computers all the time and I found it very difficult and very confusing!

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

"How can it get any worse?" another customer asked.

In June 2021, Deutsche Bank said it would migrate all its Oracle systems onto a single instance of Big Red's on-prem cloud.

I see what you did there...

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

The more things change...

We (.AU) had a similar debacle last year when an existing bank bought a neobank and then a year later migrated its customers over.

One of the more hilarious things they did was change customers' branch codes and account numbers, but whatever forwarding system they put in place during the transition apparently couldn't keep up with the transaction volume...

[David 132]

There is no dichotomy here.

Deutsche Bank: "Everything is working as planned."

Customers: "But you have our money and it's now an exercise in pain and frustration for us to get access to it or speak to a sentient human for support."

Deutsche Bank: "Did you not hear us the first time?"