K.: Hello, everyone. I’m Karl im Brahm. I’m responsible for Objectway Business based in the DACH Region. I’m here with Eric van der Deijl. Eric is Board Member at ABN AMRO Bank NV, Germany, and he has a lot of titles. He is co CIO, CIO and CDO. I’m hopefully right Eric, but would you like to introduce yourself and your bank a little bit?

E.: Definitely. Thanks, Karl. And you’re very right. Unfortunately, I don’t get paid for three jobs, but I do have a lot of titles. So, my name is Eric van der Deijl. I’m Dutch. I came over about six years ago to Germany to work for ABN AMRO Bank NV. And what does ABN AMRO do? I mean, it’s a large international bank, but here in Germany, we are mainly focused on private banking. We do have some other divisions, like commercial banking and finance. But our main focus is on on private banking. We are the third largest private bank here in Germany. When you look at it from assets under management. So, we’re quite successful, quite successful over here. And as you as you know, the clients really have special requirements. But I think we will get back to that a bit later on.

K.: Perfect. And you have to know, Eric, will be giving an exciting talk on customer experience at the Objectway Customer Conference in Venice. He will talk about personalized customer experience and driving innovation in the banking sector and I’m looking forward to the presentation and the subsequent dialogue at our conference to which we have invited around 200 decision makers of the international financial sector. And customer experience is a source of sustainable innovation and the core of Objectway. Our upcoming Customer Conference OWIN23 will be live from 18th April to 20th April in Venice. Eric, I would like to make a bold statement: banking is more than ever in the age of customer retention and loyalty. I think customers are looking for a tailored solution across all channels when it comes to their finance. They want a solution that is proactive, real time predictive, and provides them with real value. This is a challenge that banks needs to address in a competitive environment. How do you experience your customer and the demand addressed to your bank? What makes you unique?

E.: Yeah, that’s a very interesting question. So, what we see is that our clients at the moment, they really would like to see us providing services from different angles, not only from a product perspective, but also from different channels. So, what we see is that what our clients really appreciate is both a digital channel where they’re able to look into, especially into their portfolio, do slicing and dicing, but also have a discussion with the advisor and with the person. And I think that’s not something that we realize only here in Germany as a bank and ABN AMRO globally, but we also see that we have a slogan which is “A personal bank in a digital age” which actually combines the two. So, we see that clients really would like to have these two channels. And that is indeed a challenge because we come from an age where we have quite some legacies and we need to really transform that into the new age that we’re currently living in.

K.: From my point of view, that means banks need to align strategy and technology to be successful in personalization. This transformation involves the use of technology and digital solutions to optimize processes to improve the customer experience and increase overall efficiency. Are you in the process of digital transformation at Bateman or ABN AMRO?

E.: Yeah, we definitely are. And maybe too, I just told you about a slogan, “The personal Bank in the Digital Age”, but maybe it’s good to also tell you about the three strategic pillars that we have within ABN AMRO, because I think we perfectly fit together also as a company over there. So, the first one is to reinvent the customer experience or the client experience. The second one is the future proof bank, and the third one is the so-called transition to sustainability. And if you combine those three, you know that you indeed are going through a huge transformation and that’s a huge digital transformation as well. So, we’re definitely into that and that’s from very different angles from upgrading our channels that we have with our clients, upgrading our products, but also to ensure that, let’s say, the whole IT landscape and that’s within the future proof banking pillar. The whole IT landscape is organized in such a way that it’s easy through services to also provide new services to our clients through APIs. What I mean with services, but also to connect them and to interconnect, because our clients don’t like to have a connection, but all systems need to be integrated as well. And that’s what we’re able to do within this, within this service layer. So, there’s a lot of effort going into that as well.

K.: Eric, thank you very much for your explanation. Really exciting and look forward to our interaction in Venice with you, with other clients and also with the masterminds of our industry. Thank you all for your interest. And Eric and I look forward to an exciting dialogue in Venice. See you there!