Our seven strategists
will be the global
opinion leaders in
their sector 5
Carel van der Hamsvoort:
COVER STORY CLIENT COVERAGE MODEL
Carel van deiHamsvoort
Client focus, cliënt solutions
in their specialist sectors. The other 50 percent of their time
will be devoted to delivering that knowledge to the banks'
clients across the different regional businesses around
the globe. "This way specific market research or specialist
knowledge for a particular cliënt will be accessible based on
a new pay-as-you-go system, whether it concerns expertise
on the Brazilian beef market, or the Australian dairy expert."
This will require a lot of investment, he stresses, as the
demand for FAR research and expertise is likely to come
from markets where the organisation currently has too few
analysts. China is a case in point. The demand for research
and analysis of the Chinese F&A market is coming from both
Chinese clients and clients from across the globe looking to
enter the Chinese market. So Van der Hamsvoort is looking
to hire an additional eight analysts for China. "We're also
increasing the focus within FAR. We have already appointed
five of seven strategists who are responsible to represent FAR
in the seven global focus sectors. We have Dave C. Nelson
for Animal Protein and Grains Oil Seeds, Tim Hunt for Dairy,
Andy Duff for Sugar and Dirk Jan Kennes for Farm Inputs.
They will be the global opinion leaders in their sector, drive
the research agenda, and talk to clients about their strategy
at boardroom level," Van der Hamsvoort says. And with the
output of the recent published Global Dairy Outlook 'Enter
the Giants' with a focus on, among others, China and the
report 'Looking For Delta - Tectonic Shifts Towards Higher and
More Volatile Agricultural Markets, Rabobank's testimonies
of thought leadership in the different F&A sectors is already
gaining prominence.
What the new global cliënt coverage model boils down to,
Read says, is using Rabobank's existing resources to do much
more for its clients. This also means making sure that any new
investment increases the bank's effective use of its resources,
whether this is LPG's product expertise or FAR's market know
how - then putting all of this knowledge at the disposal
of the bank's Senior Relationship Bankers. "SRBs are going
to be vital to this change, as they are ultimately responsible
for bringing all of our resources to bear for our clients. But we
- LPG, FAR and Advisory, to name but three - are responsible
for making sure our SRBs have those resources at their disposal.
They cannot coordinate what they do not have or know
about. So this has to be a real concerted effort right across
the bank," Boumeester says.
The playing field is changing and we need to move beyond
our traditional role as a commercial lender and start leading
the process, and setting the agenda with our clients. We
need to work together to deliver the bank - all of the bank
- to our clients. "If we can do that, we will succeed. We have
everything it takes to do this, so now it's up to us to make it
happen," headds.B
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