Deutsche Bank is facing up to continued payment system failings, as the regulator demands answers.

Reporting in the Financial Times revealed that the bank’s executives met Bank of England (BoE) officials two weeks ago, after internal auditors reviewed annual submissions on how well it is complying with expected standards.

The BoE demanded an explanation as to why Deutsche Bank’s systems were disrupted on 10 per cent of business days in October - placing it among the least reliable Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS) participants - despite being in remediation over the matter for at least three years.

In one example, around 21,000 payments, worth hundreds of millions of pounds, were delayed for Amazon in recent months. Legacy IT systems and lack of investment in new technology have been blamed for rising costs and compliance issues.

In 2015, former chief executive John Cryan bemoaned “lousy systems” and “slow processes”, while ex-chief operating officer Kim Hammonds last year said the bank was “vastly complex” and the “most dysfunctional” workplace she had ever known.

In March, Deutsche Bank sent an annual attestation letter to the BoE stating improvements to its CHAPS system were on track, but after it was reviewed by internal auditors, a qualifying letter was sent admitting technology and safeguards were not as reliable as had been claimed.

“We continue to invest substantially in our IT and platform capabilities,” read a statement from the bank. “We put mitigating steps in place to ensure that similar issues cannot reoccur.” The BoE declined to comment.

In the most recent, revised attestation, Deutsche Bank elaborated on five significant failings, ranging from frequent outages to its payment systems, governance failings, key IT upgrades not being implemented and advanced user testing for new technology not performed before rollout.

Around 5,000 problematic payments from across Europe are also still stuck in a queue waiting for investigation in the bank’s Dublin back office.

The CHAPS problems come on the back of serious failings revealed earlier this year in Deutsche Bank’s anti-money laundering controls, which allowed cheques and high-value electronic payments to be processed without proper screening.

In July, chief executive Christian Sewing announced a new overarching corporate division, with €13 billion earmarked for investment in technology over the next four years, with a further €4 billion to improve its controls.

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