Deutsche bank goes on hiring spree

Raunaq Mohammad Investment Banking

26th February 2025

Written by Raunaq Mohammad

Deutsche Bank goes on hiring spree

Courtesy of the steep cuts to jobs imposed by CEO Christian Sewing at the start of his tenure, Deutsche Bank has undertaken a three-year hiring spree to reverse the damages.

This increase in staff has mainly been concentrated at back office roles which do not generate revenue despite the bank having invested billions of euros in IT to help automate workflows.

Inflated levels of staffing have been a re-occurring problem for Deutsche hindering the bank’s efforts to control its costs. Although Sewing has managed to trim 2% from the bank’s non-interest costs since the end of 2018 and increase revenue by 19%, he has missed or dropped cost pledges five times since 2021.

At the beginning of the biggest restructuring in a generation in 2019, Sewing promised to cut 18000 jobs from the bank’s workforce of 92000 by 2022. The lowest he managed however was 83000 at the end of 2021 missing his target of 74000 by a huge margin.

At the beginning of his tenure, bank reports indicate that front office staff halved to 32000 whilst back-office workers almost doubled to 58000. In attempt to explain this sudden shift, Deutsche claimed that these numbers are not entirely indicative of a shift from front office to back office as job that were previously counted as front office have now been reclassified as back office.

Deutsche also suggested that the increase in back office staff was consequence of the bank having to strengthen and upgrade ‘technology and controls’.

This upgrade came in response to the bank struggling with regulatory criticism over its compliance, transaction monitoring and anti-money laundering controls.

A senior banker at the firm was heard saying that “In some cases, more than 50 signatures are needed just to onboard a single new vendor”. Deutsche disputes the number of signatures needed stating that often a couple of signatures is sufficient hence creating uncertainty around this matter.

The bank also claimed to have replaced expensive internal IT contractors as part of its workforce transformation. In 2024, the bank hired 1300 ‘tech specialists’ and 400 revenue generating staff simultaneously. Headcount marginally decreased by just 400 however as a result of this restructuring.