Commerzbank signs five-year Google Cloud deal to migrate banking apps

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
30th March 2021

Commerzbank has signed a five-year deal with Google Cloud to migrate “a significant number” of its banking applications to the cloud.

“Google will now offer the bank a deeper set of platform services”

The bank, which began working with Google Cloud in 2017, is powering on with its goal to run 85% of its decentralised applications in the cloud by 2024.

Called “Strategy 2024″, the bank’s cloud goal will also see it use Google’s data analytics and machine learning technology to modernise its infrastructure.

“As we move to the cloud, Google Cloud is an important strategic partner,” says Jörg Hessenmüller, Commerzbank’s chief operating officer.

The bank hopes the migration will facilitate a continuous integration and delivery approach to its application maintenance, by making it easier to update code.

“Google will now offer the bank a deeper set of platform services to enable its digital transformation,” the firms say in a joint statement.

The first application Commerzbank developed on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) was a digital account analysis service.

It allows the bank to process loan applications more quickly, spin up balance sheets of income and expenses, as well as track financial behaviours.

A month of leadership uncertainty

Commerzbank serves around 30,000 corporate client groups, accounting for approximately 30% of Germany’s foreign trade transactions.

As well as some 16.7 million private and small-business customers across Germany and its digital Polish subsidiary, mBank.

Despite its size, the bank made a loss last year. And it anticipates a second consecutive loss this year, due to the restructure costing more than $1 billion.

The bank has, in recent weeks, struggled to iron out its leadership ahead of a major reorganisation.

Hans-Joerg Vetter resigned as chairman earlier this month for health reasons. Then Andreas Schmitz, a second board member, stepped down on 25 March. This left CEO Manfred Knof without a chairman.

But on 28 March, the Frankfurt-based lender said it had nominated Helmut Gottschalk, formerly at DZ Bank, to head up its supervisory board, which intend to elect him as chairman imminently.