Deutsche Bank Says AI Has Cut Some Corporate Loan Decisions to Minutes

Deutsche Bank is using artificial intelligence to accelerate parts of its corporate-lending process, with the bank’s technology chief telling Reuters that some smaller-company decisions now take minutes rather than weeks.

Faster decisions, limited scope

The project went live in the summer, according to Marie-Jeanne Deverdun, Deutsche Bank’s chief technology, data and innovation officer. She told Reuters that smaller corporates with less complicated structures can move from weeks to minutes, while some lending decisions for multinational corporations have moved from months to weeks.

The report describes a change in decision time for some cases; it does not say that AI makes every credit decision autonomously, removes human review in every loan, or guarantees approval. Lending remains subject to the bank’s controls and risk processes.

Controls for an agentic model

Deverdun said Deutsche Bank has built an internal platform called ADA, named after computing pioneer Ada Lovelace, to develop, monitor and control AI agents. She also said the bank is preparing for a future in which its agents could interact with clients’ agents, while identifying cyber risk as a top priority.

That future interaction is a preparation and strategy statement, not a claim that all such agent-to-agent lending is already operating. Reuters also reported that major US banks have blocked third-party AI agents from operating inside customer accounts, reflecting unresolved security and accountability concerns.

Spending and oversight

Deutsche Bank plans more than €2.5 billion ($2.80 billion) in additional technology spending between 2026 and 2028, Reuters reported. The wording matters: the figure is additional spending, not the bank’s total technology budget.

The bank’s official website separately identifies Deverdun as a management-board member and reports its work with Google Cloud on an AI solution for financial services. Those pages provide institutional context, while the lending-time figures come from her Reuters interview.

The shift shows where AI may deliver measurable operational value in banking: speeding information-intensive workflows. It also leaves open the harder questions of model reliability, explainability, cyber defence and accountability when a decision affects a borrower.

Sources

• Reuters report
• Deutsche Bank AI announcement
• Deutsche Bank management board