A hundred days plus the summer holiday season after taking office, it’s clear that Marcus Chromik has settled in at Deutsche Bank. The fact that no one asks him anymore about his exit from UniCredit’s supervisory board – and its attempted takeover of his former employer – plays only a minor role. In Milan, even before leaving UniCredit, he had repeatedly stressed that the Italians were professional enough to keep him out of the Commerzbank acquisition planning, and thus free of any potential conflict of interest.

Now the Frankfurt financial community has the physicist with a doctorate back – in his old role but at a new address. Since the annual general meeting in May, Chromik has served as Chief Risk Officer of Commerzbank’s perennial rival, the larger Deutsche Bank. Sheer size doesn’t impress a scientist like him. What excites him is the bank’s far greater international presence.

„In recent weeks I’ve been traveling extensively to meet colleagues who manage our global risk operations on the ground“, Chromik tells Börsen-Zeitung. The interactions in the US, Singapore, and India have given him new perspectives. „All in all, this provides a much more granular risk picture than would be possible at a less international institution“, he says.

A native of Kiel, Chromik spent eight years on Commerzbank’s management board. Alongside current CEO Bettina Orlopp, he served as a source of stability while board and supervisory board members came and went amid activist investor attacks. Moving from risk management at a large national bank with foreign operations to that of a truly international institution is of course a change, the 53-year-old concedes – before quickly adding "but it’s nothing compared with the transformation risk management will undergo in the coming years with the advent of generative artificial intelligence.“ It’s obvious that this disruption intrigues him not only as a manager, but also on an intellectual level.

The breadth of issues relevant to a bank’s risk management is one reason Chromik is passionate about the job. Another is the communicative aspect: „Discussing with my colleagues which risks we should consciously take and which we shouldn’t is part of it“, he notes. „I enjoy convincing people – perhaps by offering a different perspective, or pointing out facts they may not yet have considered.“