InMarketing Today

Deutsche Bank is examining options to bring its asset management and private banking businesses into closer cooperation, Bloomberg reported today, citing sources familiar with the discussions. The bank is weighing additional measures similar to the discretionary portfolio management partnership it announced in February, a step one source said could, over time, create a route towards closer organisational alignment. Deutsche Bank holds roughly 80% of DWS, its asset management arm; no decisions have been taken, and talks remain at an early stage.

The marketing signal here matters as much as the org chart. DWS is dropping its own name in favour of Deutsche Asset Management from early November — folding a sub-brand built over more than two decades back into the parent, in favour of a single, unified identity across asset and private banking. That is not a logo change. It is a statement to institutional and private clients about where the bank believes its centre of gravity now sits.

If you are consolidating structures behind the scenes, do not let the brand decision trail the operational one. Work out what the new architecture signals about permanence, priority and access, and tell key clients that story directly before they read it in Bloomberg.

The European Central Bank has launched Pontes, a new service that lets wholesale trades in tokenised assets settle in real central bank money, Finextra reported today. Pontes acts as a bridge between distributed ledger networks and the Eurosystem's Target settlement service; an initial group of market participants and DLT operators has already completed onboarding, with more committed to connect in the coming months. Full implementation, with enhanced features and longer operating hours, is not expected until 2028.

Central bank money is the strongest trust signal finance has. By attaching it to DLT settlement, the ECB is effectively doing the legitimising work that institutional adoption of tokenised assets has been waiting for — the kind of endorsement no fintech marketing budget could buy.

Asset managers and fintechs now have genuine grounds to build client narratives around tokenised assets backed by central bank settlement. Be precise about what that means in practice: Pontes is live for an initial cohort today, full functionality is a 2028 story, and conflating the two in client communications will cost you credibility the moment someone checks.

Speaking at Standard Bank CIB's Brand & Marketing Blue Flame Awards in Johannesburg, futurist Brian Solis argued that as AI makes content production abundant, the qualities that differentiate a brand shift towards empathy, creativity and what he calls 'digital warmth'. He cited WordPress VIP's Future of the Web 2026 research, which found that 74% of US consumers say the internet feels less human than it did a decade ago, and that 60% see AI in a brand's messaging as a turn-off rather than a feature.

The most useful figure in Solis's piece is the one that points to opportunity rather than risk: 61% of consumers cannot name a single brand that uses AI well in its messaging. There is no incumbent yet. For a category as risk-averse as B2B financial services and fintech, that whitespace will not stay empty for long.

Write an experience style guide alongside your brand guidelines: what your AI may say on your behalf, where a human must stay in the loop, when you disclose AI's role, and what boundaries it should never cross. Then test every AI-touched client interaction against Solis's own question — what promise are you making to that person by using this technology?