One of the new hires is based in California while the other will be based in London.

Deutsche Bank has appointed Elly Hardwick as head of innovation and Philip Milne as chief technology officer for innovation.

Hardwick is a fintech entrepreneur and former chief executive of Credit Benchmark, a credit risk information service. Prior to that, she was global head of strategy, investment and advisory at Thomson Reuters. Earlier in her career, she also worked for Morgan Stanley.

She will join Deutsche Bank this month to lead the bank's innovation activities and manage its innovation laboratories globally. In doing so, she will work closely with fintechs and the bank's business divisions to drive the adoption of new technology solutions, Deutsche Bank said in a statement. In her new role, she will be based in London.

Milne has worked extensively in both the financial and technology sectors in London and California, most recently as chief executive and founder of a virtual reality start-up in Silicon Valley, Deutsche Bank said. He was also a member of the teams that created both the Android mobile platform at Google and the Java platform at Sun Microsystems. Earlier in his career, he served as the global chief technology officer at Dresdner Kleinwort, a former UK-based investment bank which now operates under Commerzbank.

He joined Deutsche Bank in November and acts as an interface between the bank's laboratories and its wider technology organisation. He is based in Palo Alto, California.

“These appointments will help accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies to enhance our service to clients and internal processes,” said Kim Hammonds, group chief operating officer and member of the management board for Deutsche Bank.

This publication is awaiting confirmation as to whether both are taking on newly-created roles or replacing former employees and will update accordingly.