Does this signify a new round of cost cutting and off-shoring for investment banking IT professionals?

In theory, investment banking technologists should feel comparatively secure in their jobs. What few jobs firms have currently are predominantly in IT and recruiters suggest that developers and technical architects are hot property. However, it’s also clear that banks are cutting costs and offshoring more roles in this area.

In Deutsche Bank’s strategy presentation yesterday, Anshu Jain said that there were “entirely too much infrastructure staff sitting in expensive locations in New York and London”, suggesting that these roles could be offshored and added that “we know we can identify and remove them without long-term IT development or huge severance spend.”

600 infrastructure jobs (including IT) will be eliminated as it looks to cut costs by €800m in this area within its corporate and investment bank by 2015, and €700m will be stripped out of technology across the group.

Barclays’ Rich Ricci also made a presentation this week and outlined that the bank will be making more “use of lower cost destinations”. Barclays has been speeding up the outsourcing and offshoring of development work anyway, and this trend looks like accelerating.

But just how worried should technologists, particularly those in the investment bank, be about any future headcount cuts in London? One specialist headhunter, who works with Deutsche on IT roles, suggests that sweaty brows may be unnecessary.

“There’s definitely going to be a lot of vendor consolidation, data centre cuts and reviewing of licence applications, but the cuts are more likely to affect business as usual functions rather than R&D or front office application projects,” he says.

What’s more, ultimate savings in IT will require an initial €4bn one-off investment in a new technology platform. Deutsche’s strategy document points to more money being spent on “simplification and automation” as well as a “world class technology platform” including ‘Magellen’ for its retail banking function and Golden Source for reference data.

In fact, other recruiters suggest that Deutsche Bank is waiting for the strategy review to be unveiled before embarking on some relatively ambitious front office projects. “They’re definitely transferring people internally, but so far any external hiring has been frozen. I’m still hopeful that roles will start to emerge before the end of the year,” he says.

Where is Deutsche Bank hiring for technology currently? Well, um, Birmingham. Infrastructure and production services roles are being pushed up to the lower cost destination, suggest recruiters, and a lack of appetite to relocate to the Midlands has forced the bank to recruit externally.