Deutsche Bank Admits Widespread Payment Failures To BoE

Deutsche Bank told U.K. regulators that it still has ongoing problems processing high-value payments despite more than three years of remediation efforts, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Sunday (Nov. 10).

The German bank’s executives met with Bank of England (BoE) officials at the end of October following an internal audit examining its compliance with expected standards, sources told the news outlet.

In March, Deutsche told BoE that system improvements were on track. After the audit, the bank had to admit that its technology wasn’t meeting standards.

The BoE wanted to know why Deutsche Bank’s systems could not be accessed on 10 percent of business days in October. The lender is now among the least reliable participants in the Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS).

The source also told FT that Deutsche Bank’s problems resulted in the recent delay of roughly 21,000 Amazon payments.

Outdated IT infrastructure and technology have been blamed for the bank’s ongoing blunders and compliance issues.

“We continue to invest substantially in our IT and platform capabilities,” a Deutsche Bank spokesman said in an emailed statement to news outlets. “We put mitigating steps in place to ensure that similar issues cannot re-occur.”

Last month, Deutsche reported a net loss below market expectations amid a restructuring plan that includes about 18,000 layoffs. The lender reported a net loss of $924 million (832 million euros) for the third quarter of 2019. This is the second quarterly loss for Deutsche Bank, which triggered a 7.9 percent drop in the closing share price. Fixed-income trading declined 13 percent.

The restructuring has Deutsche Bank leaving equities trading along with other operations that aren’t profitable. Its goal is to focus on long-term strengths. Analysts were expecting a loss of $865 million (778 million euros), according to data from Refinitiv.

Corporate bank revenue saw a 6 percent increase, including an 8 percent uptick in transaction banking revenue.

Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing told WSJ that “the bank’s transformation is on track,” and that ultimately, Deutsche will be leaner and better able to concentrate on servicing its client base. The bank’s core business divisions were all profitable, the bank said.