An MD who complained of 'historic under-investment' in IT just left Deutsche Bank

A London-based managing director who complained of Deutsche Bank's historic under-investment in information technology (IT) just left the German Bank.

Charles Elliott, the chief information officer (CIO) at Deutsche is understood to have departed DB after 11 years. It is not clear at the moment what his next move will be. At Deutsche, Elliott headed Client Data Services which included client onboarding.

During the decade he spent at the German Bank, Elliott managed technology  for OTC (over-the-counter) collateral management, listed derivatives and clearing transformation, and trading surveillance. When he took over technology for listed derivatives and clearing transformation in 2010, Elliott says he found a "lack of a roadmap for technology" and "historic under-investment" in the segment.

Deutsche Bank has had an unwieldy array of operating systems. When ex-CEO John Cryan took over in June 2015, the bank was running more than 40  operating systems, and there were 100 different booking systems for trades in London alone. In his "Strategy 2020" plan in October 2015, Cryan expressed his intention to cut the bank's operating systems from 45 to four. By mid-2018, Deutsche was running 32 different operating systems. One analyst estimates that DB has underspent on technology for an entire decade.

Before joining Deutsche Bank in 2008, Elliott was a senior manager at Accenture. He began his career as a consultant at Logica in 1995. His other stints include working as a senior developer at Schroders, a consultant at Capco, and an associate director at Fidelity International.

Deutsche has been trying to level-up its technical expertise. In 2018, it created two new software teams in London for new product development as well as started the Alpha-Data Innovation Group (DIG) to use machine and deep learning for deriving insights from both financial and non-financial data. The bank has also hired 900 people for its technology centre in Bucharest.

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