Bank completes Northern takeover

Northern Bank chief executive Don Price said staff had been trained

The Danish Bank, Danske, has said it has completed its takeover of the Northern and National Irish banks.

All 95 Northern Bank and 59 National Irish Bank branches are now using the same systems as the rest of Danske bank.

About 4,000 people worked over the Easter bank holidays to make sure that the transition went as planned.

Danske purchased the two banks for £967m from National Australia Bank in December 2004.

During the past year, the staff of the two banks in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland completed a training programme to learn to use the new IT systems and products.

In connection with this, 450 employees of the two banks visited branches in Denmark to see how the systems work.

More than 300 employees from Scandinavia came to Northern Ireland to help manage the transition.

Customer benefits

Danske has said the new system will mean staff at the banks will spend less time on administration and have more time to serve and advise customers.

"A shared platform is essential for achieving economies of scale, lower transaction costs and further growth," Peter Straarup, chief executive of Danske Bank, said.

More than 1.5m customer records and other data has been transferred during the past 13 months.

An upgrade of branches will be completed in the next few weeks.

Northern Bank chief executive Don Price said it had been a challenging process but the bank now had "one of the most advanced technology platforms anywhere".

"Our new ebanking service is state of the art," he said.

"Customers can set up their own direct debit, pay someone in the Eurozone, and there is even a service that tells them whenever money is being credited or debited to the account."