The word 'restructuring'
often strikes fear into the
hearts of employees,
however in Rabobank's
case, recent organiza-
tional changes have
been relatively trouble-
free. The Word met with
Rik van Slingelandt and
Hans ten Cate for a
progress report.
Unique Alliance
Achieving critical mass
In order to better serve our clients and
improve our wholesale offering's position
in both the home market and abroad, the
Executive Board resolved in February to
restructure the bank's wholesale entities
thisyear.
Since then, endorsed by the Worker's
Council, Van Slingelandt and Ten Cate
have lead the way in combining
Rabobank International (Rl), Group
Treasury (GT) and Group Treasury Support
(GTS); and ushering in a 'Federative
Alliance', unique in Rabobank's history,
between Rl, Rabobank Nederland
Corporate Clients (CC), and Rabo
Securities. Their vision is to create one
'wholesale culture' characterized by co-
operation and professionalism. Their end
goal: a fully integrated approach to clients
that drives market share higher.
'It's all about intensifying the co-operation between the
product orientated people and market orientated people,'
Van Slingelandt explains. 'And about recognizing the total
cliënt revenue and franchise value and not solely individual
product profitability.' Ten Cate adds: 'It's also about enabling
the corporate and retail banks to cross sell to their clients to
increase the share of wallet.'
Many in the organization welcomed the changes that have been
viewed a logical progression. 'Global Financial Markets (GFM)
and GT were approaching clients with similar products, and
comparable products were being traded by different desks,'Van
Slingelandt says. 'In previous years, for example, both the former
Rl Capital Markets and GT have had strategies that have focused
on pushing a core (but limited) product range. The integration of
these two groups allows GFM to refocus activities towards clients
- creating a better organization to face and advise our Group/RI
core clients and helping the Group to increase its franchise.'
'We are also in a stronger competitive position,' he says, 'because
we are able to differentiate our offering with customer intimacy
and innovation across a larger product range - not just trying to
survive on price competitiveness in a product push style offering.
In fact, both former groups had recognized this but lacked the
critical mass without a single sales organization structured to
really deliver customer intimacy.'
Similarly, co-ordinating the approach to clients and developing
long lasting relationships resulting in a greater share of clients'
wallets are the key motivations behind the Federative Alliance.
Ten Cate explains, 'The history of CC and Rl can be seen as the
pendulum of a clock. Previously CC was split off from Rl to focus
on the Dutch wholesale market,' he says. 'Flowever, this led to a
situation where most products came from Rl while Relationship
Managers worked for CC. So the pendulum had to swing back to
prevent CC from becoming an island. Co-operation is irrefutably
better than internal competition.'
He continues: 'Furthermore, we want to increase co-operation
between Corporate Advisory (Rabo Securities) and Relationship
Management. Naturally, Corporate Advisory are most interested
in making deals, but someone in the bank should be thinking
about the relationship in the long term - this is the Relationship
Manager. That's where co-operation counts. It's not just what a
The Word
