Purpose: what does that look like in action? With Christian Sewing.

Our claim is 'With deep dedication' and I do believe that you cannot actually pronounce and express a purpose if you don't believe in it, if your heart and your soul is not behind that. We want to show to the public we are there for our clients, we are there for the society. We want that people are actually feeling protected with our help.

Thank you for having me.

I do believe that purpose is something which is providing direction and if you are running a company with 90,000 people with fortunately millions and millions of clients, you need to give a long-term direction. You give a kind of a North star where you would like to be, for what Deutsche Bank stands. And that is all about the purpose. We need to be able actually to explain in one sentence what Deutsche Bank is all about. And that should not change. I want to have a purpose which is valid for the next decades. And if you create something like that, then you give direction for your clients, direction for your people, direction for other stakeholders like investors, but you also play a key role in the society. And that's all about purpose.

Well, the pivotal moment was, first of all, when we established it. I have to say that Alex Wynaendts played a really critical role in defining the purpose because he wanted to create what I was just talking about, thinking about for what is Deutsche Bank standing in one sentence. A long-term ambition, a long-term North star building. So that was the first pivotal moment. The other one I would say, Ben: when we actually decided upon our future strategy and as preparation for the Investor Day on November 17th 2025. Because we had to take many decisions. We had to take business decisions. We had to take financial decisions. And I just told you about what purpose is all about. It's actually a long-term North star and that means that always having the purpose, so to say, at the heart of your decision means also that you are not taking short-term decisions, but that you build the company long term and therefore a purpose. And the purpose was actually a wonderful reminder for all our discussions in August, September, October last year that we want to build Deutsche Bank for the long term. And while that means that we also need short-term optimisation and that we want to improve quarter by quarter in terms of client experience, in terms of satisfaction to our clients, in terms of financial development, there must be something long-term branded for Deutsche Bank. And hence, I would say the purpose was always at the centre of discussions. And when we came to critical moments, be it business decisions, be it structural decisions, be it people decisions, we always came back and said: is that decision supported by our purpose? And hence I would say it was, kind of, in the root of our discussion making in the Investor Day. And I do believe that this is also a reason that in particular also our internal employees are following this purpose and also the direction of the bank so much because they know and they see that we are actually linking the long-term strategy of the company with our given purpose.

That we have a culture which is, so to say, a Deutsche Bank culture, which is a culture which is aligned to this purpose. And by the way, Ben, this is not something which we can achieve in a month, in a quarter. It's constantly evolving. But if you have a long-term orientation, therefore I'm always taking the word either direction or a North star, people know in which direction we want to go. We had so long discussions actually on the words in our purpose, be it 'lasting success' or be it 'financial security' and that gives direction to our people how they should behave. Second part is if you really look into our purpose statement, it's all around our clients. We want to put the client into the centre of what we are doing. If you translate that - and to our 90,000 people: we don't only have client-facing people. We have people doing risk management decisions, being in Compliance, in Anti-Financial Crime, in other infrastructure departments. But I want that all of the 90,000 people are actually thinking in terms of: what can we do better? How and where can we improve? In the end, with the end goal: how can we make it better in terms of client experience? And you know, if we think about more aligned and clearer and faster credit decisions, that includes risk management. But if we are faster there and if we improve our processes there, it has a positive impact on our client experience. And therefore what I would like to create is actually cultural standards, a culture which is supporting the purpose. And all of the 90,000 people should, and I think more and more understand that they can contribute positively to this purpose.