A new era, in partnership with Google Cloud

Dear Colleagues,

Today is a remarkable day in the history of Deutsche Bank. The ink is now dry on a multi-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud. This type of partnership is rare and a first of its kind in financial services.

When I am asked why this matters, for me it is simple: we need to focus on what we do best. We understand our clients and the financial products and services that will support their success. We do not need to spend time and resources building and maintaining an application hosting environment – it is much more efficient to consume these services from a technology partner who specialises in this. Replicating the artificial intelligence and data analytics capabilities of Google Cloud is a task we will never win.

In many ways, the experience of this year has sharpened minds on why this is such an essential step. We needed:

• To scale. As we moved 70,000 staff to working from home, we needed to source more capacity to cope. This would have been simple in the cloud where you can scale instantly and pay for what you use.
• Faster development. Our clients’ needs were evolving quickly and having a ready-made cloud environment to deploy new services would mean we could respond more quickly to the most pressing challenges and trends.
• Better data. Our clients faced a number of dynamic risks, such as foreign exchange exposure and cash flow forecasting. With Google Cloud’s advanced artificial intelligence capabilities, we can deliver more accurate insights to develop our services further.
• A culture shift. We needed a more agile way of working, with a greater focus on engineering skills and an ability to test concepts immediately. Partnering with Google Cloud will support our ambitions to build an engineering culture at Deutsche Bank.

But this only counts if we continue to maintain the confidentiality, integrity and availability of our clients’ data. We have always been clear that this is a non-negotiable requirement, and we set up the partnership to that effect.

I hope you take the time over the coming months to find out what the partnership means for you and your stakeholders. We see relevance for every area in the bank, as showcased by our potential use cases.

I want to end by thanking the teams from both Deutsche Bank and Google Cloud for finalising the partnership in the most challenging of circumstances. The collaboration and trust that has been developed between the two companies means I am convinced we will be successful together.

I look forward to keeping you updated on progress.

Bernd