Status: 07/07/2021 4:13 p.m.
Many Commerzbank branches had already been temporarily closed during the lockdown of the past few months. By the end of the year, 240 are to be eliminated for good. And that is just the beginning.
The deforestation of its branch network planned by Commerzbank is becoming concrete. After the Frankfurt money house announced yesterday which branches will be closed at the regional level, it is becoming apparent today that 240 branches will be closed at the federal level by the end of the year. It should start in October.
Because fewer and fewer customers have recently taken advantage of the offers of a branch and instead do their banking transactions online, but the bank must save, the new CEO Manfred Knof has decided to radically change course. By the end of 2022, the branch network in Germany is to be halved from currently 790 to 450 locations. In addition, by 2024, 7500 of the 39,500 full-time positions across the Group will be sacrificed to the savings program.
Lower the costs
The bank did not publish a complete list of the 340 Commerzbank branches affected by the closure. A spokesman confirmed information from media reports for individual federal states and regions. Then Commerzbank closes eight of 36 branches in Berlin, 38 of 78 in Baden-Württemberg, eleven of 27 in Hamburg, 17 of 46 in Saxony, seven of 23 in Saxony-Anhalt and 17 of 35 in Schleswig-Holstein According to the spokesman, the institute has 23 branches dense, in the “Region West”, which includes North Rhine-Westphalia and parts of Lower Saxony, 99 locations are on the cross-off list.
At the same time, the remaining branches are to be upgraded, because Commerzbank is convinced that there will still be a need for personal advice on site in the future – despite the increasing importance of the Internet. According to a study by the Dutch bank ING, 15 years ago only 20 million Germans used digital banking, today it is just under 47 million – and the trend is rising. For this reason, such a dense branch network is no longer necessary, according to the bank.
Thousands of jobs have already been dismantled
With the tough austerity course, Knof, who has led the bank since the beginning of the year, wants to bring Commerzbank back into the black in 2020 after a billion-dollar loss. The framework for cutting thousands of jobs in Germany has already been agreed with the employee representatives, and by the end of the year management wants to clarify how the business areas will be tailored in the future. The Executive Board wants to avoid redundancies for operational reasons, but does not rule them out.