The transfer of Credit Suisse customers to UBS systems represents one of the biggest technical challenges in the banks' integration process.

According to UBS Chief Technology Officer Mike Dargan, the bank has successfully migrated the first Credit Suisse customers to its platform. The tests in Asia went smoothly, he told news agency «Reuters».

«In September, we conducted a trial run with several hundred customers of varying complexity from Hong Kong and Singapore,» he said. «It went very well. The whole room applauded. There were tears,» Dargan added.

In the coming weeks, the bank will begin migrating customers booked in Luxembourg and Hong Kong, followed shortly by Singapore. Other countries will follow by the end of 2024 and into next year.

1,3 Million Customers Transferred

In total, approximately 1,3 million Credit Suisse customers must be transferred to the UBS platform. «This is the largest data migration ever conducted in an M&A transaction in the financial services sector, if not the largest overall,» said the CTO of the bank. «Overall, we are fully on track with the technological integration.»

According to reports, 110 petabytes of data need to be transferred. One petabyte is equivalent to 500 billion pages of printed text, which would be enough to fill 20 million large filing cabinets.

Credit Suisse Servers Being Decommissioned

As part of the integration, Credit Suisse systems will be shut down. Around 90 percent of the 3000 Credit Suisse applications are to be discontinued. Of these, approximately 560 applications with 13 petabytes of data have already been taken out of service. Additionally, 40.000 of Credit Suisse’s total 100,000 servers have been shut down.

«We are on track with the applications, and ahead of schedule with the servers,» said Dargan.

Biggest Risk

The bank will reduce the number of external employees to retain most permanent Credit Suisse staff. As a result, the proportion of internal staff will increase to 85 percent, up from the current 60 percent.

Group CEO Sergio Ermotti previously described the migration of customer data as the biggest risk in Credit Suisse's integration.