Deutsche Bank’s lifts lid on cloud progress with 260 apps moved to Google

European financial services giant Deutsche Bank has been talking up its ongoing deal with Google for cloud services.

In a blog earlier this month, Deutsche Bank’s Chief Technology, Data and Innovation Officer Bernd Leukert said the company now has 260 applications with Google’s cloud services.

Deutsche Bank started its move to the cloud in 2019 with the migration of non-business-critical applications, before moving on to building cloud-native apps. These include its Frontier Finance invoicing-and-payments platform and hybrid cloud products such as its Autobahn FX trading product.

The company’s first mission-critical app to make the move from on-premise to the cloud was its SAP S4/HANA platform, covering 17 financial reporting systems.

“The effort was worth it. We’ve seen data processing improvements of up to 50%, and a reduced recovery time by a factor 16-20,” Leukert wrote of the bank’s cloud migration.

How Deutsche Bank is using GenAI via Google partnership

The company signed a 10-year deal with Google in 2020, with the expectation the agreement would generate an ROI of €1 billion for Deutsche Bank, according to Bloomberg.

The company’s multiyear cloud project has allowed it to deploy new services faster and will lay the foundations for greater uptake of artificial intelligence, Leukert added.

Deutsche Bank has a number of generative AI projects underway, including using GenAI for checking and processing financial documents, which has cut handling time by 40 percent; AI assistants that help employees with research; and writing code.

Deutsche Bank said it expects AI “will become an integral part of nearly every aspect of our business, from internal processes to client facing interactions and capabilities”.

AI is one of the three pillars of the bank’s technology strategy, alongside cloud and what it refers to as ‘talent’ – building its digital skills base.

In its most recent earnings call, the company said that it has made 1,300 new hires in technology, and it’s relying on IT improvements to “reduce complexity” as part of a plan to make €300 million in savings. The bank is also using increasing automation to save a further €200 million.

“We are determined to make this bank more efficient, and that means changing how we do things. It starts with a simpler organizational setup and a smaller workforce. And it requires us to become even more technology driven,” Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing told investors.

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