a new director joins our company does the bank need to know that

Management change is already recorded with the Chamber of Commerce, not automatically with the bank

You must report a new manager to the Chamber of Commerce, but that is a different notification than the one to the bank. The entry in the Commercial Register is automatically updated once the Chamber of Commerce notification has been processed, but the bank does not see that automatically. Banks are legally required to know who is on the management of a business customer and who is authorized to sign — this is called customer due diligence. In case of a management change, the bank usually requests a current extract itself and asks you to confirm who will be authorized to sign going forward.

In practice, this is handled through the questionnaires that banks send periodically, or through a separate request following a Chamber of Commerce change. Often the question is who the legal name of the company may represent, and sometimes also under which number the enterprise is registered — which can be found via the registration number under which the enterprise is registered. If you have already filled this in for another bank or customer, it is usually a matter of uploading the document again: a Chamber of Commerce extract from after the change is usually sufficient as support.

Why the bank wants to know this precisely

This follows from the identification and verification obligation that banks have towards their business customers, based on the data recorded for each enterprise according to the Commercial Register Act 2007 — including managers and signing authority. The bank does not verify the Chamber of Commerce entry itself, but asks the customer to provide proof as soon as there is a change. Without that proof, the bank cannot tick the questionnaire as "yes"; with a valid extract, it is usually a matter of uploading and confirming.