Deutsche Bank’s planned tech spend unaffected by global crisis

Changing working practices

Sewing described how changing working practices, forced upon the bank by Covid-19 lockdowns, have proved a success and are likely to change how people work in the future. “If 60% of employees worldwide can work away from their offices and still deliver excellent service to our clients, then of course we have to ask ourselves: can we give our staff additional flexibility to work from home if they want to?”

He added that new working practices will also support cost-cutting through technologies that enable people to work remotely and hold virtual meetings.

“Do we need quite so many offices in expensive urban centres? If, in many cases, video conferencing is almost as good as visiting a client – do our staff still have to travel, and especially to fly, so much?

“Of course there’s often no substitute for face-to-face meetings with clients, regulators and colleagues, and we want to be close to our clients,” he said. “But we have decided that we are going to significantly reduce the time we spend travelling. This will cut costs – and benefit the environment.”

Deutsche Bank is certainly not alone in the banking sector. Jes Staley, CEO at Barclays Bank, which has 85,000 staff, recently said the company will change how it thinks about its locations. “The notion of putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past,” he said.

But while the cost-cutting role of tech has been demonstrated during Covid-19 lockdown, the vast majority of Deutsche Bank’s IT investments will be channeled towards technology that will increase revenues, with online and mobile services already creating value.

“It’s not just key to us becoming more efficient, it’s also key to us providing a better service for our clients,” said Sewing. “For instance, more of our clients are using our mobile banking app and our online banking service.” Meanwhile about 30% of the bank’s foreign exchange revenues are based on technological innovations implemented in the past five years, he said.

Cloud computing is another area to receive focus. In fact, Sewing said the bank is about to “take a quantum leap in innovation” through working with cloud providers. “We will have access to the most modern IT infrastructure without having to actually own and run it.

“Together with our partners, we want to use the cloud as an accelerator for innovation, for example, by deploying more artificial intelligence and machine learning technology. We’ll be able to accomplish more and innovate more – and we’ll be cutting our costs as we do so.”

After initial caution, banks are increasingly working with suppliers such as Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft to access on-demand cloud infrastructures and development tools.