Postbank had to close its branches nationwide on Monday morning. The reason for this was a problem with the alarm systems
A massive technical disruption on Monday morning meant that all Postbank branches across Germany had to temporarily close. In some cases, Postbank customers received calls from employees who canceled appointments for the morning citing the disruption.
As a Postbank spokesman confirmed at Capital’s request, all around 550 branches nationwide had to close. “Due to the technical malfunction, the alarm system was actually not operational nationwide,” said the spokesman. “We therefore had to keep the branches closed until the problem was resolved.”
Problem with the service provider
An external service provider is therefore responsible for the alarm systems. “Together with the service provider who was responsible, we have now resolved the problem,” said the spokesman. Postbank did not want to provide details about the nature of the technical malfunction. “We view more detailed information about the disruption as internal information that we do not want to discuss publicly.”
Shortly after 11 a.m. the problem was resolved and the branches were reopened. If the branches were to open when the alarm system wasn’t working, the risk of a bank robbery would be great.
The technical breakdown in the alarm systems is the next negative news about Postbank. The Deutsche Bank subsidiary has been struggling with service problems for months. Twelve million customer data records were supposed to be moved from Postbank servers to the parent company, but that went terribly wrong.
Bafin special representative for customer chaos
The indignation of many customers was huge; some of them could no longer access their accounts and service advisors could not be reached. The additional costs ran into the millions. In the end, the chaos was so great that even the banking supervisory authority Bafin got involved: in October, it appointed a special representative to exclusively take care of it.
When asked about the massive service problems, Deutsche Bank boss Christian Sewing recently admitted errors. “What happened at Postbank is not good,” said Sewing, and continued: “Unfortunately, we made mistakes on the operational side.” The employees should have been trained better. Manager Manuel Loos, head of organization for the private customer division, had to resign at the beginning of the year.
Around half of Postbank’s approximately 550 branches are also scheduled to be closed by mid-2026.
Source: Stern
