In total, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bafin) recorded more than 27,000 complaints in 2023 - an increase of around 87 percent compared to the previous year, as Bafin announced in Bonn on Monday. Trouble with account terminations, delayed annual tax certificates and unauthorized fees for home loan and savings contracts were the main reasons.

"We are seeing a special effect in the banking sector," explained the head of Bafin's consumer protection department, Christian Bock. "A significant proportion of the complaints about disruptions in private customer service at the banks were attributable to one financial institution," he explained, without naming a name. The debacle surrounding the IT changeover at Postbank, which belongs to Deutsche Bank, caused a stir in 2023 and brought Bafin onto the scene. The IT changeover was supposed to have been completed in July 2023. However, customers were temporarily unable to access their accounts and customer service was barely available. Bafin boss Mark Branson described the chaos at Postbank as "unacceptable".

Deutsche Bank commented on this on Monday: "At the end of March, as recently announced, we overcame the backlog in customer-critical processes, which were also the subject of BaFin's orders, and are continuing to work on improvements." The financial institution is aware that it still has work to do to further improve customer service and processes in the coming months. Deutsche Bank board members are also feeling the effects of the Postbank chaos in their wallets. The Supervisory Board cut the annual bonuses of six out of nine Management Board members for 2023.

(Report by Frank Siebelt and Tom Sims; Edited by Olaf Brenner; If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets)).