1,000 Deutsche Bank employees replaced by robots, 17,000 more to go

Deutsche Bank is using robots to replace 18,000 employees. According to a London-based media organization, Deutsche is pushing to "automate large parts of its back-office" via a new strategy called "Operations 4.0," as part of its $6.6 BN savings initiative over the next three years.

Earlier in July, the bank announced that it will cut down 18,000 jobs over the next three years and will also drop its equity sales and trading unit. Mark Matthews, Head of Operations for Deutsche's corporate and investment bank, told media that machine learning algorithms "massively increased productivity" and "redistribute capacity."

He further stated the investment in machine learning technology helped to save 680,000 hours of manual work and that it so far used bots to process 5 MN transactions in its corporate bank and perform 3.4 MN checks within its investment bank.

The German bank confirmed to the media that it has cut 4,700 jobs in the last year, with about 1,000 of those since the announcement in July. It is reported that  Deutsche Bank is expected to lose more than $5 BN this year as it pays for the restructuring amid a several-years running slump in revenue. Employing algorithms to cut human labor costs would be welcomed by investors hungry for profits and a reversal of the share price that’s collapsed over the past decade.