FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Some Deutsche Bank customers will not have access to all services this weekend as the bank completes the merger of its IT platforms with Postbank customers, a project that will save hundreds of millions of euros in the years to come.
Germany’s largest bank began acquiring Postbank, with its millions of clients and roots in the country’s postal system, in 2008 during the global financial crisis, but it has struggled to complete its integration.
In the fourth and final wave of the integration process this weekend, Deutsche Bank will transfer 4 million contracts of 2 million Postbank customers to a common IT system, a Deutsche Bank spokesperson said.
It will mean that customers will not have all access to all services over the weekend, which the bank has communicated on Twitter and elsewhere.
Deutsche Bank is currently in the process of cutting costs and reducing headcount, and the Postbank technology integration, dubbed internally as project “Unity”, will eventually bring savings of 300 million euros ($325.29 million) a year by 2025, the bank has said.
“Unity will pay off,” Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing told analysts in April.
Deutsche had hoped to complete the process last year but ran into some hitches and had to keep old systems running at some cost to the bank.
After completion, Deutsche will have 19 million customers’ contracts from Postbank on a single platform, a milestone for CEO Sewing as he continues to turn around the bank after years of losses and scandals.
The savings in part will come from the decommissioning of Postbank software and hardware.
($1 = 0.9223 euros)
(Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Miranda Murray and Jane Merriman)
