Deutsche Bank has significantly reduced its reliance on IT services companies, shifting from a 70% dependency model to just 30% over the past five years, according to Bernd Leukert, chief technology, data, and innovation officer at Deutsche Bank.
“Yes, it has reduced… We are now close to achieving 70% with internal engineers. But when we started this journey five years ago, it was roughly only 30%,” Leukert told FE.
The bank currently employs over 18,000 technologists worldwide, including around 8,000 in India, spread across Bengaluru and Pune.
Despite reducing external dependency, Deutsche Bank continues to collaborate with technology vendors instead of independently developing products.
“We have expertise in banking and managing customer data, but we are not necessarily the best at building models ourselves. That’s why we partner with firms like Google and train their models with our data,” Leukert explained.
The bank has also adopted a pay-as-you-use pricing model, particularly for cloud services, to optimise costs. Unlike traditional on-premise infrastructure, which requires provisioning for peak demand, the cloud model allows Deutsche Bank to pay only for actual usage.
“The advantage with Google is price elasticity. We pay based on usage — higher costs during peak times, but lower costs when demand drops,” he noted.
By migrating to the cloud, Deutsche Bank has achieved a 30% reduction in operational costs, enhancing efficiency while maintaining flexibility in IT spending.
“Our operational costs have dropped by 30% since moving to the cloud. This transition has helped us consolidate infrastructure, improve scalability, and allocate resources more efficiently,” Leukert added.
Speaking at Deutsche Bank’s ‘Bank on Tech’ event, Leukert highlighted the role of its India-based teams in developing advanced solutions, particularly leveraging large language models (LLMs) in collaboration with external technology providers.
He also underlined the importance of a standardised platform approach, which he introduced at Deutsche Bank based on his experience in the technology sector.
“Previously, rigorous standardisation and platform discipline were lacking. When I joined, that was one of the key changes I implemented,” he said.