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Markus Böhm / DER SPIEGEL
Anyone who wanted to go to a Postbank or Deutsche Bank branch that Monday morning returned irritated. The bank was “temporarily closed,” it said on quickly printed notes. And even if no reason was given that would have contributed to understanding: "We ask for your understanding."
Deutsche Bank and its subsidiary Postbank actually had to temporarily close all of their branches across Germany on Monday morning. It was only in the course of the morning that a spokesman for the financial institution announced that the reason was a malfunction in the alarm systems.
This disruption affected around 550 Postbank branches and around 400 Deutsche Bank branches. "We have been working diligently with the service provider responsible to resolve the disruption," explained the spokesman.
It was fixed around 11 a.m. The branches could have been reopened immediately afterwards. The bank did not want to provide details about the nature of the technical malfunction, presumably for security reasons.
Bank advisors postponed appointments
The magazine “Capital” had previously reported on the problems in the Postbank branches and about customers who had received calls from employees about them: bank advisors canceled appointments for the morning, citing the disruption.
Postbank had massive IT problems last year and was therefore often in the headlines. There were significant problems when migrating Postbank's IT - with twelve million customers - to the systems of Deutsche Bank - with seven million customers - and complaints had increased because customers were temporarily unable to access their accounts. Finally, the correction of the problems was monitored by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.
It's almost a joy when a problem can be resolved so quickly.
mamk/Reuters/dpa-AFX