The planned branch closures at Postbank are now also calling on the Verdi union. Deutsche Bank wants to close almost half of Postbank branches by 2026. 250 of the current 550 locations would be closed in the next two and a half years, the banking group’s private customer executive, Claudio de Sanctis, announced in a statement Interview published on Monday with the Financial Times at.
Verdi doesn’t think much of the project. “This announcement comes at completely the wrong time,” says Jan Duscheck of the SZ. He is head of the banking sector at Verdi, where he is responsible for Deutsche Bank. The brand’s reputation was already damaged after the IT migration. “Now the board is already opening the next construction site, even though the current crisis has not yet been overcome.”
In fact, Deutsche Bank is currently struggling with the consequences of moving all customer data from Postbank to Deutsche Bank’s IT systems. However, thousands of customers complained: Many were unable to access their accounts for weeks or even complained about unauthorized debits. Customers with seizure protection accounts were particularly affected, some of whom, according to consumer advocates, were in dire straits.
How many jobs will be lost now? This is not yet known
One of the main problems was that the board led by CEO Christian Sewing wanted to carry out the IT migration in a kind of savings option and had not planned enough employees for the call centers. This recently even concerned the financial regulator Bafin. A special supervisory representative is now tasked with ensuring that normal business operations run again. Sewing publicly apologized for the debacle at the end of September.
However, Claudio de Sanctis, the responsible private customer executive, has not yet said how many jobs will be lost as a result of the branch closures. But there are probably several hundred to thousands. Duscheck from Verdi criticized the plans, which now led to further uncertainty among customers and employees. Many employees would now consider leaving. The bank is currently having problems recruiting young talent. More and more employees will soon be retiring. “We therefore consider such an aggressive branch dismantling to be completely wrong; after all, you first have to prove that you also have a good offering digitally.”
The union is therefore demanding that they “promptly extend the protection against dismissal until the end of January 2024 in order to send a signal to the employees”. The board should also say specifically how much it wants to invest in digitalization. “Cutting savings and closing branches is not a strategy.”