Banks have spent years promising that artificial intelligence will make them faster.
Deutsche Bank (DB) is starting to put numbers behind that promise.
The German lender says AI is helping cut down decision times for loans.
The system went live this summer, Deutsche Bank Chief Technology, Data and Innovation Officer Marie-Jeanne Deverdun told Reuters.
The bank is using AI for more than just drafting emails and document summaries. The technology is helping make decisions about whether and how fast a firm may borrow money, which is one of its most economically significant activities.
If the system operates at scale, it might result in more loans being handled by the same employees, faster client responses, and a greater likelihood of gaining business before a competitor.
Compared to another chatbot, it is a much more noticeable AI benefit.
Deutsche Bank turns weeks of lending work into minutes
There’s a reason why closing corporate loans might be a sluggish process.
Before making a capital commitment, banks must comprehend a company’s ownership structure, current debt, legal entities, and hazards.
A global corporation with subsidiaries dispersed over many nations is more difficult to assess than a small business with a simple organizational structure.
Deutsche Bank is using AI to streamline that task.
More Artificial Intelligence:
AI’s biggest business opportunity may not look like AI
AI racks are outgrowing old power: 2 chipmakers have a strategy
BofA splits software into winners and losers as AI agents arrive
“For smaller corporates, which are less complicated in their setup and their legal structure, we’re talking weeks to minutes,” Deverdun told Reuters. The improvement is less noticeable but significant for international borrowers: months might turn into weeks.
The crucial thing to remember is that AI is supporting the bank’s lending process rather than just taking the place of human credit assessment.
This is important in a highly regulated sector where banks are still required to provide an explanation for loan approval, rejection, or pricing.
In honor of computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, Deutsche Bank has developed an internal platform known as ADA.
As technology advances, the platform enables the bank to create, monitor, and manage AI agents while alternating between several AI models.
Related: Deutsche Bank just made a fresh case for buying gold
Additionally, it establishes a unified governance layer to prevent various bank departments from developing separate AI systems with disparate regulations.
According to Deutsche Bank, its central technology program is designed to establish technical standards, guardrails, and shared AI services across the company.
That could sound like plumbing in a back office.
For a bank, it can be the difference between an AI experiment and something that authorities will allow to be integrated into crucial financial processes.
Deutsche Bank is spending billions to make AI pay
The loan initiative is a component of a broader technological drive.
Deutsche Bank plans to spend an additional 2.5 billion euro, or about $2.8 billion, on technology between 2026 and 2028, according to Reuters.
That money has to produce something investors can eventually see.
By 2028, the bank hopes to generate around 2 billion euros in gross efficiency via platform growth, process automation, and broader use of AI. These reductions are a component of Deutsche Bank’s strategy to lower its cost-to-income ratio below 60% by 2028.
The loan-processing scenario is crucial because of this. When management can claim that a procedure that used to take weeks now only takes minutes, AI becomes much simpler to defend.
Similar benefits have been reported elsewhere by Deutsche Bank.
Its more than 15,000 engineers use AI coding helpers such as GitHub Copilot and Google Gemini Code Assist. The bank estimates that those tools save developers about 1.5 to 2.5 hours per week.
Earlier this year, Deutsche Bank investment-bank technology executive Denis Roux said some internal technology projects that once took about two years were being completed in three to six months with AI assistance, Reuters noted.
When combined, the instances reveal a pattern. AI does not result in a single, significant cost savings. Instead, it reduces the amount of time spent on thousands of minor jobs, which may ultimately manifest in margins.
Deutsche Bank says that for loan processing, AI just turned weeks into minutes.Bloomberg / Getty Images
Faster lending could become a competitive advantage
Reducing expenses is just one aspect of cutting approval time.
It may also aid Deutsche Bank in gaining clients.
A company seeking funding may contact many banks simultaneously, so a clear advantage goes to the lender who can assess the risk, comprehend the business, and respond first.
If it can consistently make judgments for smaller businesses in minutes rather than weeks, Deutsche Bank may be able to handle more requests without hiring more staff. Additionally, it can lessen waiting, which is one of the main annoyances in commercial banking.
That’s the benefit. The amount of human monitoring still needed is the more difficult issue.
Concerns about cybersecurity, autonomous AI systems, and banks’ ability to justify sophisticated model judgments are growing among bank authorities.
Reuters reported earlier this month that U.S. and European banking supervisors are increasing scrutiny of AI agents, including whether banks can shut them down, audit their decisions, and recover from AI-enabled cyberattacks.
This produces a unique tension. The potential productivity boost increases with AI’s level of independence. However, governance gets increasingly challenging as it functions more autonomously.
With ADA and human accountability, Deutsche Bank is attempting to address that.
The bank is also already using agentic AI in areas like compliance with “know your customer.” Its Private Bank launched an AI system in September, initially in Singapore and Hong Kong, to help verify how wealthy clients accumulated their money.
This implies that corporate financing is not a one-off experiment.
Deutsche Bank wants AI agents talking to other AI agents
The bank is already considering ways to use AI outside of its workforce.
Deutsche Bank is preparing for what Deverdun called an “agentic economy,” where the bank’s AI agents may communicate directly with the AI agents of its clients, according to Reuters.
That may someday alter the nature of banking. A corporate AI bot may collect the data rather than a business employee compiling paperwork and requesting funding from a lender.
A bank AI agent could analyze it. The two systems could exchange information before a human gets involved. While that future is still developing, the measurable improvement happening now is more important.
Deutsche Bank posted a second-quarter profit after taxes of 1.9 billion euros, up 10% from the same period last year. Profit after taxes for the first half hit a record 4.1 billion euros.
At the time, CEO Christian Sewing said AI presented more opportunity to save expenses and enhance customer service.
Investors will get another look at the bank’s progress when Deutsche Bank reports third-quarter results on Oct. 28.
The quantity of AI tools that Deutsche Bank introduces is not the figure to keep an eye on in the long run.
The question is whether such instruments significantly alter the bank’s financial situation.
An excellent place to start is by reducing weeks to minutes.
If Deutsche Bank can replicate that improvement in software development, customer service, lending, and compliance, AI ceases to be a technological story and turns into a marginal tale.
Related: Deutsche Bank doubles down on Tesla at a lower price