Deutsche Bank aims to become a totally tech bank
In a short span of time after it launched its tech upgrade, Deutsche Bank is today aiming to be a high-tech bank:
When Deutsche Bank started its tech upgrade in 2018, one of the focus points has been the use of natural language processing and the bank has been able to derive extreme benefits. For example, its technology staff has evolved a tool using NLP to read through the bank’s archive of millions of emails exchanged between employees, partners and customers and developed sets of keywords and their relationships to people and other keywords. This offered unprecedented access to data for the bank, which hitherto remained untraced and unused. For example, the technology team analyzed emails for years for insider trading and other compliance uses. It used tools developed using NLP to create open source libraries to mine information hidden in these sources and got an insight across many additional areas in the bank.
UNATTENDED AUTOMATON
The bank had also developed robotic process automation and unattended intelligent automation with the help of specialist software companies. It now has a digital app on the desktop to automate repetitive tasks, using the tool, which it calls unattended intelligent automation. The bank has automated the integration between its systems and thirdparty systems. It also uses specialized software tools to implement artificial intelligence that will cut in half the time it takes to screen clients for adverse media, part of the bank’s KYC screening processes. The software scans news sentiment and context for negative news, rather than looking for rudimentary word associations.
The bank has also opted for an agile development approach, which teaches employees to think about automating processes, so everyone uses the same project management language and metrics. It has standardized the process with digital tools that do not require the average employee to be a programmer.
AUTOMATING AML
In earlier days, money laundering regulations required manual screening of every financial transaction. Now, using RPA, it has streamlined the manual side of the processes and is said to have saved some 210,000 hours of work that employees would typically do by hand. During Brexit, the automation process helped the bank to check over 3.4 million positions, automatically close 380,000 accounts and migrate 80,000 accounts.
The bank believes that the turnaround effort is an ongoing process and it is kept at a constant momentum. So, recently, the bank signed an agreement with Oracle to modernize its data handling software behind key trading, risk management and capital planning so that it can gain a competitive edge.
TIE-UP WITH ORACLE
A majority of the bank’s applications - some 40 petabytes - are on Oracle Databases already. It decided to move the databases worldwide to more current versions on Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, which provides highperformance database services managed by Oracle in a private cloud. The migration that will take about 3 to 5 years, will help save millions of euros for the bank even while continuing complying with European data protection rules. Compared with software that runs in the public cloud, Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer service runs in the bank’s own computing centers. This allows the bank keep total control of customer data, while Oracle manages the hardware and nondisruptive software updates. The system also delivers lower network latency compared with public clouds, especially critical for banking applications that require nearly real-time responses to market events.
The bank and Oracle have also agreed to form a joint innovation partnership, bringing together Oracle’s and the bank’s engineering and technology teams to explore potential uses for data security technologies, blockchain, AI and analytics to develop new financial products and services.
The bank now aims to have software engineers constitute more than half of its total number of employees and covert itself
SHOWING RESULTS
With its aim to use technology to simplify its operations, have better controls and reduce expenses, the bank, which has significant operations in investment, retail and corporate banking and asset management, has started showing results of its longdrawn overhaul process set in motion some 2 years ago by its CEO Christian Sewing. It has reported its best quarterly and half-year earnings in July 2021 since 2015, while the combined profit its 4 core divisions rose by 90% from the previous year.
The bank is a founding member of ‘Verimi’, a combination of ‘verify’ and ‘me’, which is a consortium of leading companies from a variety of industries. Its main purpose is to function as a cross-industry digital identification and verification platform to serve the needs of consumers. It provides a single sign-on for customers to access and use potentially limitless services - from banking to airline reservations to telecommunications) and allows them to transact with as many companies as they need to without having to provide their sign-in credentials each time. Using Verimi, companies can recognize users and at the same time its users can remain in control of their data. Each individual decides how much or how little to share. Verimi aims to give German (and, later, European) consumers a single, secure payment platform that can be used for transactions with any company.