Deutsche Bank to spend €1bn to go digital

Deutsche Bank is spending up to €1bn on digital technology over the next three to five years following the modernisation of its core banking platform.

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The bank plans to invest in digital technology across its entire business in an effort to win new business, make its operation more efficient and offer new products.

It said the digital investment will help it “capture new revenue opportunities, for example, through remote advisory channels; realise platform efficiencies through automated or digitised processes; and develop new client propositions”.

At the same time the bank is planning to close hundreds of branches in its retail business, known as Private & Business Clients (PBC). 

“PBC will focus on developing a leading advisory-driven, omni-channel proposition for private and commercial clients requiring a superior product offering," it said.

"Between now and 2020, PBC aims to invest some €400m-€500m in digital technology. It also plans to reduce its branch network by up to 200 branches by 2017.”

Deutsche Bank has been laying the foundations for the modernisation of its IT. It recently completed a project to move its retail businesses, including Postbank, from legacy IT systems to an SAP core banking system. This is part of the bank's €1bn IT transformation project, known as Project Magellan. 

The move should enable the introduction of digital technologies. Legacy IT systems at banks were not designed to support digital technologies but the off-the-shelf system, which has been modified, will.

Furthermore, SAP made this a pet project for its core banking business and, if digital implementations go well, it will be good for the bank and a feather in the cap of SAP's banking business, according to IT outsourcing consultant and former JP Morgan CIO, Jean Louis Bravard.

“There is a strong incentive for SAP to get it right,” he said. 

The system is built on SAP Banking Services and Grid Computing. It includes Deutsche Bank's entire IT infrastructure, as well as the clearing and settlement processes of its private and business clients division in Germany.

In February 2015, Deutsche Bank’s wholesale banking arm signed a 10-year deal with HP to re-engineer the IT that underpins it, in preparation for the next phase of its digital transformation. The multibillion-euro deal will see the German banking giant use cloud platform HP Helion, modernising the IT that supports the bank’s applications.