Banking has always been about trust, relationships and capital, but it has equally always been about technology. Since our 1870 founding, technological progress has been vital in driving our business, enabling more effective and efficient client service.

Today, computing power is the invisible engine of modern finance, crucial for everything from mobile app logins to international trade executions. Daily, we handle millions of transactions, manage billions in liquidity, and deliver real-time risk assessments. This relies on advanced computing infrastructure, including high-performance data centres and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven analytics. All our services, from hedging strategies to liquidity management, depend on our capability to process, analyse and act on data at scale.

Beyond powering our operations, technology helps us understand and support our clients' needs, including by integrating our financial services into their digital business models.

Our clients are faced with a new era of unprecedented uncertainty and volatility. Geopolitical shifts, supply chain disruptions and fluctuating market conditions demand agility and foresight like never before.

In this environment, our clients are looking for faster and better insights into how to run their businesses. They want flexibility – including on financing – so they can adapt to unexpected events. And above all, they want to better understand their risks so they can protect themselves accordingly.

International trade serves as a key example. Recent developments are reshaping global trade patterns, increasing costs and introducing new risks that challenge commerce’s logistics and financing. Consequently, corporate clients seek our support for de-risking and restructuring their global supply chains.

A second example is market volatility. For instance, in April this year, we saw substantial volume increases of 25–50% in segments such as global FX. Clients depended on our stable systems, which ensured seamless service, underscoring our operational excellence and reinforcing their trust.

Technologies such as the cloud, AI, automation and data-driven decision-making are reshaping our operations amid rising client expectations and play a key role in navigating uncertainty and volatility. Particularly in uncertain times, clients demand stable services, faster and safer transactions, seamless experiences and personalised offerings.

“Our commitment to technological advancement is intrinsically linked to our role as a Global Hausbank”

To meet these evolving demands and to harness the power of new technologies effectively, a coherent and forward-looking technology strategy is paramount. The foundation of our approach is a standardised, cloud-based infrastructure.

Our ‘Concept of One’ is key: all units operate according to consistent standards, based on a shared architecture, and use technologies jointly. This unified approach ensures efficiency, interoperability and scalability across the entire organisation.

The cloud forms the technological foundation of our transformation, offering a highly standardised, up-to-date environment with scalable capacity. This flexibility prevents infrastructure from bottlenecking innovation, allowing quicker implementation of new products or client improvements. Moreover, the cloud delivers scalable computing resources essential for sophisticated AI models and experimentation with the latest AI/ML tools.

Building on this, a modular technology architecture is vital. Decoupling transaction processing from banking services via application programming interfaces (APIs) provides greater flexibility and faster execution of new client functionalities. This technology allows us to rethink financial service delivery, embedding finance at the customer's point of need – from payments and instant loans to wallets, deposit accounts and insurance.

Our commitment to technological advancement is intrinsically linked to our role as a Global Hausbank. It means helping clients navigate geopolitical and macroeconomic shifts and accelerating their transition to a more sustainable and digitised economy.

We believe that our technology-driven approach, underpinned by the ‘Concept of One’ and a robust cloud strategy, is proving effective in a fast-changing geopolitical and macroeconomic environment. It is enabling us to:

• Support clients through market volatility with resilient and scalable systems.
• Provide enhanced risk management capabilities and data-driven advisory.
• Deliver stable returns and reliable services despite global uncertainty.

By continuously investing in and evolving our technological capabilities, we are not just adapting to the future of finance; we are actively shaping it, ensuring we remain the trusted partner our clients need in an ever-changing world.

Bernd Leukert is Chief Technology, Data and Innovation Officer and Member of the Management Board at Deutsche Bank

Image: Mario Andreya