The second leg of the marathon

When you are fortunate to have worked with amazing organisation, built lasting friendship with colleagues, crafted great moments, transformed business, got a lot of success and recognition, so much that it becomes so much integral part of your life, you begin to think what is next for you. This was exact feeling I had when I decided to leave my previous organisation last year and join Deutsche Bank. As I approach the completion of one year at Deutsche Bank, the only thing I can say is that it has been an amazing journey of large scale transformation and massive learning of the business of banking. Last but not the least, it has been great meeting amazing people and building, what hope will be, long-lasting relationships.  

Being a part of Technology, Data and Innovation at Deutsche Bank, being able to define and plan the execution of technology transformation along with my peers, has to be one of the key moments for me in the last one year. Moving to the public Cloud with massive scale has to be one of the boldest move in the financial industry and I am glad to have been part of it. I am sure this will shape the banking industry and more financial services firms will be going in this direction. The main reason that we were able to make this bold statement with our partnership with Google was that we have a very strong team inside the Technology, Data and Innovation division that works together with business for the success of Deutsche Bank.  

As the Global head of Technology centres, my main responsibility was to build the technology centre strategy and that was imperative for Deutsche Bank Technology transformation. These centres have to be the powerhouse for strategy execution, our engineering delivery and innovation. We identified the technology centres which emerged as strategic due to depth and breadth of portfolio, knowledge base and presence of wide talent pool with expertise in financial services industry. I am very excited that within the first 9 months of executing this strategy, the Technology Centers are now part of a single umbrella with consistent operating model and delivery. While bringing the Technology Centres together was an experimental idea a year back, this identity is firmly ingrained within Deutsche Bank today. This is a very strong foundation to deliver on our cloud transformation for Deutsche Bank.

As a part of transformation, it was important to plan, execute and implement the technology for the Corporate Functions at Deutsche Bank. I was fortunate to be being given this task as a Chief Information officer for Corporate Functions six month back. This allowed me to get to know new stakeholders, understand their needs for technology in order to remain competitive as well as meet all the regulatory obligations. Once again, I think I am very fortunate to have worked with some of the best people, who are working tirelessly to build and execute on the plan to move towards the target state architecture.

Personally, the last one year has been great from the learning point of view. I had an explosion of knowledge as I was new to a regulated industry like banking and financial services. This experience has expanded my horizon and has given me endless opportunities to work and drive strategy across broad spectrum of business units and organisation functions. I have the privilege to work with the best engineers who are motivated and excited to be part of this journey. Few things have not changed for me as we are building the place together with pride and mutual respect. I still continue to spend lot of time with the start-up community and enjoy the energy it brings. I deeply believe that the secret to success is to take ownership, “Run it, like you own it”. I continue to play my sports, badminton, running and cycling and I do enjoy a good breakfast with my friends on the weekend after sports.

I lived a dream in my last organisation and I continue to live the dream at Deutsche Bank. I look back on my one year journey with satisfaction and I am fully convinced that my decision to join Deutsche Bank was the correct one.  

Thank you all at Deutsche Bank for the amazing one year and continue to shine and set new standards. 

Stay healthy and stay safe.

@deutschebank #positiveimpact