Breaking new ground

Last year, we established our technology strategy in which we laid out the pillars that would transform Deutsche Bank into a world-class, technology-driven organisation. In that time, we have seen a number of our ideas come to life. 

During the pandemic, technology has proven again to be an enabler, ensuring our colleagues could work safely and effectively from home. Our technology capabilities enabled us to move 80,000 people to work from home, delivering for our clients, regulators and our colleagues. We supported our traders and salespeople to conveniently work from home for the very first time.

The transformation journey gained momentum with our focus on mobile technology, whether that is developing our retail app, building on leading digital customer platforms like Autobahn, or investing and co-developing collaboration tools like Symphony. We broke new ground recently with the interoperability of Symphony with WhatsApp and other communication platforms, which allows us to safely and securely provide a preferred channel for our clients to discuss their requirements with our business leaders, while meeting stringent security and compliance criteria. The response has been hugely positive. 

On the one-year anniversary of Deutsche Bank’s “compete to win” strategy, we announced something remarkable. Back in February, we began conversations with a number of cloud providers to explore a strategic partnership. The teams did an outstanding job in adapting to the evolving situation, finding ways to work together remotely, and staying on track to deliver a letter of intent with Google Cloud. Deutsche Bank is Europe’s largest bank and Google is one of the top technology companies in the world. We truly believe this partnership is a defining moment for technology at Deutsche Bank. This type of partnership is unique and positions Deutsche Bank and Google as frontrunners to help transform banking.

We are excited by what both sides bring to the partnership. Deutsche Bank technologists not only understand technology solutions, but also embrace our business opportunities. This knowledge helps us build the platforms and micro-services to get to the root of what our clients care about. Google brings tremendous infrastructure know-how and a high competence in the future technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Analytics, which will be a game changer for us. This partnership makes our technology teams more effective as they no longer have to concern themselves with managing our infrastructure, but can focus on application development to solve business problems.

We know we do not have a business without protecting our data and complying with all regulations – and this is our top priority. We understand that the transfer and use of data is a topic our clients feel strongly about and generates a great deal of discussion across industries; we will not compromise on this. That is why we will select the location of our data in accordance with the applicable legal provisions. Our data stored at rest in Google Cloud is encrypted by default; on top of this, Deutsche Bank will also use Deutsche Bank keys which are managed by the bank. We are keen to take advantage of the extensive and continuous investment Google makes in security to protect our information assets. As we continue to discuss the final details of the contract, both sides understand the importance of this topic and are committed to working together to maintain the trust of our clients. This is the foundation of our agreement.

Last but not the least, Deutsche Bank will be an attractive place to work for our technologists. We have already received great interest in what we are embarking on and welcome the best technology talent from the market and universities as we propel Deutsche Bank into a digital future. This partnership will help us rebalance toward an innovative, engineering-led culture within the Deutsche Bank, while moving away from managing infrastructure. The partnership provides a great opportunity for our technology teams to work side-by-side with talent from Google, and learn from them. This will be learning by doing on-the-job training.

When I joined Deutsche Bank in September 2019, I was already excited by the direction we were heading. With this new chapter, I have seen a major goal come to life. We believe our bank is a perfect fit for what Google is aiming to achieve in moving cloud technology forward. We also match their ambition and willingness to invest where we see significant benefits for our clients.

This scenario lays the foundation for a successful partnership. While we have some steps to take to finalise the partnership, I am looking forward to seeing where the journey takes us.