Deutsche Bank has been very successful in wealth management in recent years. We are also the clear market leader in our home market. But I see several areas where we can still improve. A prerequisite for that was merging Wealth Management and Private Banking – historically two separate divisions at Deutsche Bank. We are harmonising infrastructure, processes and tools. That will create economies of scale, which are crucial in an industry that has experienced significant disruption and will continue to be defined by innovation.

The term is well established and is used both in the market and within Deutsche Bank for serving affluent clients. Now it’s unambiguous: Deutsche Bank Wealth Management is the point of contact for affluent and high net worth clients. Choosing „Private Banking“ might have caused confusion…

Exactly. Historically, Private Banking and Retail – or Personal Banking, as we call it at Deutsche Bank – shared a management structure. By deciding to transfer the business with affluent and high net worth clients, who save consistently and have corresponding investment needs, into Wealth Management, we are aligning even more closely with client demand.

A unique selling point is the combination of high quality local advice, global expertise, and close cooperation with our Corporate Bank, our Investment Bank and our asset manager DWS. This combination exists only at one place in Germany – at Deutsche Bank.

We have more than 300 locations across the country. That is a completely different scale. A foreign bank cannot match that – I speak from experience. Take our presence in Gotha, for example: you can’t simply replicate that from the outside. Of course, it’s not about providing ultra-complex family-office services on the ground in Gotha, the kind of business that US competitors and other international players also target. But that client group accounts for a much smaller share of our wealth management. More than 80 % of the business is far less complex, and for those clients proximity to their adviser is very important. That is why the regional branch network is the backbone of our business.

Not in the part of the business where in-person advice is paramount. There the real competitors are the savings banks.

We need a strong digital offering and we are investing in that – no question. But I would put a question mark over whether a digital offering alone will satisfy younger clients through all stages of life. The next generation also wants personal advice. That even applies to fintech founders themselves: they are happy to operate purely digitally until something comes along such as financing the first home for their family. Then they also want a Deutsche Bank adviser. So while we do compete with fintechs in some areas where we aim to improve, in others they are not yet competitive.

Because we would lose a very important group: affluent clients who are just starting to build wealth. Their primary source is usually income, so they are typically very busy professionally and have little time for in-person advice. A strong digital platform is therefore critical. By recently moving our Deutsche Bank app to the cloud, we have laid an important foundation to significantly enhance our offering. We also want to provide these clients with digital services that they won’t find with our competitors.

It’s about client needs. We want every wealth management client to have both a competitive digital experience and access to a dedicated adviser. These clients do a lot themselves and can choose whether to involve their adviser. At the other end of the spectrum are very complex needs. For those clients, a single adviser cannot provide all the guidance. The adviser manages the relationship, works in tandem with an investment specialist and brings in experts from across the bank, including the Investment and Corporate Bank. In those cases, physical proximity to the experts is less important.

Again: it depends on client needs. For truly large fortunes – what we call strategic ultra high net worth clients – we often no longer discuss individual investment transactions with the wealthy individual directly. This business, overseen by Stefanie Rühl-Hoffmann, is essentially an institutional interaction. Our advisers speak with the client’s own advisers, typically the family-office professionals.

We want to grow faster than the market, gaining share, and we are laying the groundwork now. In line with our global house bank strategy, we aim to be a strategic partner for our wealth management clients in all areas – both corporate and private. That naturally leads us to cover a greater share of their financial activities. This cross divisional cooperation is already working well and sets us apart from competitors. But we want to create incentives to deepen it further. That’s why every employee’s objectives will include both qualitative and quantitative targets for cooperation with other parts of the bank.

If you look at Deutsche Bank’s annual report, you’ll see that wealth management is already highly profitable. By aligning our management logic even more closely with client interests, we can grow further together with our clients. Incentives must be geared to that, not to short term profits such as transaction revenues. This long-term perspective strengthens trust – and that trust is reflected in the growth of assets we are entrusted with.

We want to keep increasing assets under management and raise the share of discretionary mandates. Clients who give us a discretionary mandate typically achieve better expected returns at the same level of risk than if they manage assets themselves or work with an adviser on individual securities. It is also good for the bank because it generates recurring, stable revenues.

Naturally, there will always be clients who want to make all or part of the decisions themselves, and we will continue to accommodate that. But successful asset management convinces many clients to give us a mandate. It leads to better outcomes for clients and for the bank – a true win-win. For advisers, it opens the door to conversations about other aspects of a client’s life instead of whether a particular stock is up or down today. That improves the quality of advice.

Roughly a year ago, Raffael Gasser took over Deutsche Bank’s domestic business with wealthy and ultra wealthy clients. As part of the merger of Private Banking and Wealth Management initiated by head of private clients Claudio de Sanctis, he introduced a regional model. Since July the business, like the corporate-clients division, has been organised into six sales regions.

For the new role, the Swiss national relocated to Frankfurt with his family. The 47-year-old joined from UBS, where – after a long career at Credit Suisse – he most recently headed the northern-European wealth management business from Zurich. Gasser holds a Master of Science in International Management from the University of St. Gallen and is a CFA charterholder. He began his career at Goldman Sachs and worked at McKinsey until 2009.