Add Swiss IT disaster articles and homepage article cards
Created 6 new investigative articles covering Swiss IT failures from 2020-2024: - INSIEME: CHF 116M tax software failure (2020-03) - Swiss E-Voting: Security flaw cancellation (2020-08) - SECO Corruption: CHF 99M contract scandal (2021-02) - Juris X: Zürich's 16-year software odyssey (2022-06) - Swisscom: 8-hour emergency services outage (2024-07) - Credit Suisse: 3,000 applications integration nightmare (2024-11) Added article-card shortcode and CSS for homepage layout. Updated homepage to display all investigations with featured cards. 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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content/articles/credit-suisse-3000-applications-legacy.md
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title: "Credit Suisse: 3,000 Applications and Counting"
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subtitle: "Inside the IT nightmare that keeps UBS executives awake at night"
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category: "Investigation"
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date: 2024-11-20
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tags: ["Credit Suisse", "UBS", "Banking", "IT Integration", "Legacy Systems"]
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---
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## The Numbers
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| Metric | Value |
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|--------|-------|
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| Credit Suisse applications inherited | 3,000 |
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| Applications UBS is keeping | ~300 (10%) |
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| Applications being decommissioned | ~2,700 (90%) |
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| Integration budget | USD 13-14 billion |
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| Cost savings target | USD 4.6 billion (remaining) |
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| Swiss client migration phase | Q2 2025 – Q1 2026 |
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| Client accounts to migrate | 1.5 million |
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## The Inheritance
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When UBS absorbed Credit Suisse in March 2023, they acquired more than a troubled bank. They inherited what one former Credit Suisse technology managing director described as institutional IT chaos:
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> "Pretty much every department at Credit Suisse built and maintained its own risk systems."
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Not one risk system. Not a unified platform. A sprawl of departmental systems—for prime, equity, rates, FX, credit, and various regional operations—each built and maintained independently.
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Three thousand applications. Decades of accumulated technical debt. No unified architecture.
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## What Keeps Ermotti Awake
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UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti has been candid about the technology challenge:
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The Credit Suisse technology "keeps him awake at night."
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UBS is bringing over only 10% of Credit Suisse's applications. The other 90%—approximately 2,700 applications—must be decommissioned. If this migration and decommissioning don't go to plan, Ermotti warned, UBS's cost-cutting intentions may be thwarted.
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{{< irony >}}
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A bank that collapsed in part due to risk management failures maintained separate risk systems for each department, with no unified view of enterprise risk.
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The technology architecture reflected the organizational culture: siloed, uncoordinated, and unable to see the full picture until it was too late.
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{{< /irony >}}
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## The Integration Challenge
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UBS faces what may be the most complex banking technology integration in European history:
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### Phase 1: International (Completed)
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Relatively straightforward migration of non-Swiss client segments.
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### Phase 2: Swiss Clients (Q2 2025 – Q1 2026)
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The critical phase: migrating 1.5 million Swiss client accounts from Credit Suisse systems to UBS infrastructure.
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### Early Warning Signs
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Delays have already occurred. UBS postponed the transfer of some wealthy clients after earlier transfers of less affluent customer segments revealed operational issues:
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- Transactions requiring revision
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- Systems temporarily unavailable
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- Integration teams facing heavy workloads
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## The Cost Spiral
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UBS initially budgeted USD 13 billion for Credit Suisse integration. They've since increased this to **USD 14 billion**.
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The bank has realized USD 8.4 billion in gross cost savings—about 65% of target. The remaining USD 4.6 billion depends largely on successful technology integration.
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If the Swiss phase encounters significant problems, those savings may evaporate.
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## The Deutsche Bank Warning
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UBS leadership is acutely aware of what can go wrong. They've studied Deutsche Bank's Postbank integration—a cautionary tale of IT project failure:
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- Deutsche Bank attempted multiple times to integrate Postbank's systems
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- The goal was to decommission Postbank's IT by end of 2022
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- Heavy delays and budget overruns pushed savings to end of 2025
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- Three years behind schedule
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{{< irony title="The Parallel Systems Problem" >}}
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UBS cannot run Credit Suisse and UBS application systems in parallel for long:
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- Duplicated operations increase costs
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- Parallel systems raise the cost/income ratio
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- Operational risk multiplies with complexity
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- Every day of delay costs money
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But rushing the migration risks the operational failures already seen in early phases.
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Damned if they hurry. Damned if they don't.
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{{< /irony >}}
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## The Cultural Factor
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Credit Suisse's IT chaos wasn't accidental. It reflected organizational culture:
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### Departmental Autonomy
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Each business unit operated independently, building systems to serve immediate needs without enterprise coordination.
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### Short-Term Thinking
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Systems were built for current requirements, not long-term maintainability or integration.
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### Risk Silos
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The same fragmentation that produced 3,000 applications also prevented unified risk visibility—a factor in Credit Suisse's ultimate failure.
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### Talent Exodus
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After the acquisition announcement, Credit Suisse technology managing directors began leaving. Institutional knowledge walked out the door with them.
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## The Swiss Banking IT Reality
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Credit Suisse isn't unique. Swiss banking IT has structural challenges:
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- **Regulatory complexity**: Swiss and international requirements create compliance overhead
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- **Legacy dependency**: Core banking systems often date to the 1980s or earlier
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- **Talent competition**: Top technology talent has options beyond banking
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- **Security requirements**: Financial services IT must meet stringent security standards while remaining functional
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UBS inheriting Credit Suisse's IT mess is dramatic, but legacy technology challenges exist across Swiss banking.
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## The Verdict
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{{< conclusion >}}
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Credit Suisse's 3,000 applications represent more than technical debt. They represent institutional dysfunction—a bank where departments built separate systems, risk was fragmented across silos, and nobody had a unified view of the enterprise.
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UBS now faces the challenge of decommissioning 90% of these applications while migrating 1.5 million client accounts without major disruption. The integration budget has already increased by USD 1 billion. Delays have already occurred.
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The technology integration is make-or-break for UBS's acquisition thesis. USD 4.6 billion in remaining cost savings depends on successful execution. The Deutsche Bank/Postbank precedent shows how badly such integrations can go wrong.
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Credit Suisse failed for many reasons—risk management, culture, regulation, market conditions. But the 3,000-application IT landscape both reflected and enabled that failure. A bank that couldn't unify its technology couldn't unify its risk view. And a bank that couldn't see its risks couldn't survive them.
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UBS has until 2026 to prove they can do what Credit Suisse never could: impose order on chaos.
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{{< /conclusion >}}
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<div class="sources">
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### Sources
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- [eFinancialCareers: UBS is fretting about Credit Suisse IT systems](https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/ubs-is-fretting-about-credit-suisse-it-systems-and-credit-suisse-technology-m-ds-have-quit)
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- [eFinancialCareers: UBS has only scratched the surface of Credit Suisse's legacy technology](https://www.efinancialcareers.it/news/ubs-has-only-scratched-the-surface-of-credit-suisse-s-legacy-technology)
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- [CTOL: UBS Tackles Massive Credit Suisse IT Migration](https://www.ctol.digital/news/ubs-credit-suisse-it-migration-swiss-phase-billions-at-stake/)
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- [The Digital Banker: UBS on USD 1 billion quest to avoid Deutsche Bank's IT missteps](https://thedigitalbanker.com/ubs-on-us1-billion-quest-to-avoid-deutsche-banks-it-missteps/)
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- [Private Banker International: UBS delays migration of ultra-high-net-worth Credit Suisse clients](https://www.privatebankerinternational.com/news/ubs-delays-credit-suisse-clients-migration/)
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</div>
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