Deutsche Bank plans mass IT overhaul, cuts 15k tech jobs

Deutsche Bank has outlined plans to significantly overhaul its IT infrastructure and axe 15,000 IT jobs as part of a wider effort to return the bank to profitability.

The bank last night outlined its five-year technology overhaul - one of four new strategic goals for the company - to claw back a €6 billion (A$9.3 billion) third-quarter loss.

It revealed it would shed 9000 full-time and 6000 contractor jobs from its global technology and operations infrastructure team.

The tech restructure aims to “modernise its outdated and fragmented IT architecture".

Co-CEO John Crayn said the overhaul was intended to increase efficiency at the bank, and remove "cumbersome and often incompatible" systems.

The bank is planning to bring critical IT capabilities back in house.

"About 80 percent of our 7000 applications were outsourced to a multitude of vendors, design was basically done in silos and joint standards either hardly used or not used at all," he said.

Deutsche Bank revealed 35 percent of its data centre hardware - or 166 individual products - was either close to or beyond end-of-life.

The bank has pledged to invest additional funds into its facilities to remove all old hardware, consolidate the facilities and establish state-of-the-art data centres by 2020.

It will work to reduce the complexity of its infrastructure by cutting down its 45 existing operating systems to four within five years, boost its use of private cloud technology from 20 percent to 80 percent, and increase its use of application virtualisation to 95 percent.

Deutsche Bank expects such efforts will cut its run costs by €800 million.

Current global chief information officer Kim Hammonds will lead the technology overhaul as the bank's next chief operating officer.

Former COO Harry Ritchotte will depart at the end of the year to create a new digital bank for the company. 

The bank began to make moves to address its IT woes earlier this year, signing a 10-year, multi-billion deal with HP in February for its Helion private cloud.

The five-year strategy announced today will also see the bank offload businesses employing around 20,000 staff.

It will exit its retail Postbank unit, split its investment bank in two and cut ties with 50 percent of its clients. Deutsche Bank will also cease its operations in ten different countries.