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

4 million contract migration went as planned, spokesperson insists

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 its technology to a new IT platform based on Deutsche Bank systems.

In January, the Berlin Kurier reported on customer complaints that online transfers did not work, activation of online telephone banking failed, and some had not been able to use online banking for 14 days.

"Out of five attempts to make a transfer by phone, I have to cancel four times because there are problems with the voice computer. Then you are put through to the employee and you get the message that the system is overloaded. Due to the high volume of calls, no processing can take place. After 50 years, I will change now," one angry customer said.

A spokesperson for Deutsche Bank told The Register the program was fully on track, and all 4 million contracts of Postbank customers were migrated between December 31 and January 2 as planned.

"We received some complaints from users regarding their individual online or mobile banking configuration, due to the fact that few functionalities and features changed," they said. "There are no current issues with regards to central IT platform. The program is fully on schedule."

Whether it is an issue with user acceptance or the technical platform, customers are rating the online banking services an average of one star, according to TrustPilot.

In February, one complained a password reset took 11 days, another said they weren't able to make deposits in branch, while others said online services were unavailable.

"Absolutely nothing has worked since the IT relocation botch. 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. At the time, the bank declined to comment on whether its core banking systems continued to run on SAP, as they had since 2010.

Six months earlier, Deutsche Bank said it would "co-innovate" with Google Cloud, creating "the next generation of cloud-based financial services." ®