In the Clouds with... Deutsche Bank's Christian Rhino: "What makes my work so exciting is that retail banking is setting the pace for AI."
Anant Nawalgaria
Sr. Staff ML Engineer & Founder of Gen AI Intensive, Google
Welcome to our “In the Clouds…” interview, where we hear from business leaders about secrets to success, what keeps them up at night, and how they relax.
Christian Rhino is the chief information officer for private banking at Deutsche Bank. Rhino oversees technology projects for all retail, consumer, and wealth management units across Germany's largest bank.
It’s a homecoming of sorts after similar roles at Helaba, a large German commercial bank, and Commerzbank — Rhino started in the ecommerce division of Deutsche Bank in the ‘90s, helping lay the foundation for many of the digital services he’s building today.
Big six
1. What business challenge is keeping you up at night?
One is reshaping our older architecture. We were still running some mainframes in Spain, Italy, Germany, and Belgium, and we wanted to move them to a new architecture on the cloud. With our consolidation with Postbank, that laid the foundation for a unified architecture for retail banking across the whole group.
The other is AI. We have several hundreds of use cases running across the bank, and we're pushing hard on a handful of lighthouse projects, like agents on the customer side, high-risk client onboarding and know-your-customer analysis on the corporate side, plus back-office work. There's a lot in flight, and we're optimizing across all of it.
2. How deeply is the company invested in the cloud and AI?
We’re in deep. The majority of our applications across retail, private banking, and wealth management are running on Google Cloud as of last year. We might move a little more, but a lot of that is sovereignty and regulatory restrictions, in places such as Switzerland and Singapore.
Part of what makes my work so exciting is that retail banking is setting the pace. We can really help be the pioneers in figuring out what works and what can translate for the rest of the bank.
We have several hundreds of use cases running across the bank, and we're pushing hard on a handful of lighthouse projects.
3. What's your advice for recruiting and managing top talent?
The entry level and junior engineers we hire today bring different perspectives and working styles than even a few years ago. They’ve grown up with the latest tools and often arrive with a clear view of which tools they want to work with. They approach problems differently than more experienced developers, and they move fast.
Managing that energy is the trick. What works well for us is bringing together people with complementary strengths — combining pace and experimentation with experience in keeping projects on track, managing scope, budget, and the path to the end goal. We make those pairings deliberately, give teams real flexibility, and only put in essential guardrails so we can support creativity.
4. What's the most transformational IT initiative you've led?
There have been a few. Last summer we launched a white-label platform for online and mobile banking serving more than 20 million clients and completed the lift-and-shift of the workload in just three months.
That’s the kind of project you don’t forget — millions of customers are relying on you with their savings and investments. There’s no room for failure, and no option to shut systems down. Teams were working at 2 o’clock in the morning to manage the cutover, and once everything was running smoothly, they celebrated together.
But the more significant shift for customers is what we're building with Google: a new AI-powered customer experience. We had an earlier chatbot called Paula at Postbank, it was a useful milestone. What we’re building now is a fully interactive assistant based on a large language model.
That’s the kind of project you don’t forget — millions of customers are relying on you with their savings and investments.
5. Every executive has their secrets of success they repeat when taking a new job. What's yours?
Try not to take things too seriously and make sure you have fun along the way. Many years ago, I had a boss who came in every single morning with a smile on his face. The coffee machine wasn't working, there was no parking, the train was late, or a rough morning at home — none of it mattered. He always smiled.
I asked him how he managed it, and he said, “Christian, just try it. Try smiling at everyone.” So I did. You smile, you say good morning, and people smile back. It builds. People have told me they think I'm permanently happy, and I'm not. But I try to show that I am, and it actually helps me get there. It really works.
6. What is the best advice you've ever received?
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was to enjoy the work, but keep perspective. Results matter, of course — that’s true in any organization. But the best places also understand that long-term success depends on relationships, trust, and balance. If you’re lucky, over the years you don’t just build things, you build connections that last. That perspective has stayed with me.
Quick six
Book on your nightstand? I actually read several dozen newspapers every morning between 5 and 6 a.m.
Lunch with a leader, living or dead? Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase.
Favorite way to relax? Alone time.
Return to office, work from home, or mission to Mars? Mission to Mars, hello! It would be a
lot of fun.
Three apps you can't live without? Honestly, none. I try not to rely on a phone.
Your motto or mantra? Life is short. Nothing is so bad that it breaks you.
