Deutsche Bank will expand its technology workforce in India, given that the German financial services company is concentrating on enhancing its internal engineering and IT capabilities and conducting more strategic internal technology research.
“With our technology strategy launched in 2019, we want to strengthen engineering and IT architectural excellence in Deutsche Bank, and we need to have these capabilities in-house,” Bernd Leukert, its chief technology, data and innovation officer said.
The bank’s employment in India has doubled in the last two years to 5,000, with most of the new hires working in tech and other roles. This year, it will hire an additional 2,500 workers to “cater to growth and backfill roles,” he said.
Currently, one-third of the world’s tech workforce resides in India.
When job cuts and organisational restructuring were taking place throughout the rest of the bank, the decision to outsource tech development and expand tech hiring was made.
India, said Leukart, was the obvious place to increase its presence given the quality of technology and engineering skills available here. “We decided to grow into technology centres, and India is now our biggest one. It isn’t necessarily about gaining cost benefits, but rather the technology talent that we see in India,” he said.
The India technology centre today offers services in a wide range of industries. It is at the forefront of technological advancement in cloud computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and remote work.
This shift in emphasis results from a more significant market shift since bank customers are adopting technology more quickly.
“As our customers are changing their business models, we need to change as well to support them in their transformation … and technology is the enabler for that,” he said.
“The change starts with how we as a bank engage with customers,” said Leukert. “We have redefined it and want to leverage modern technology to incorporate our financial services into the digitalised business models of our customers,” he said.
Deutsche Bank and Google established a collaboration in 2020 to co-innovate new products and services and implement a new cloud-adoption strategy.
Strengthening internal technology talent would be the long-term goal, according to Leukart. It plans to eventually have 30% of its tech personnel from vendors and partners and 70% from internal people. This is now split about equally.
