Cooperation should
flow naturally from
our common agendcP
g Jan van Nieuwenhuizen:
14 issue 27 RI WORLD
COVER STORY WORKING TOGETHER
On the same team
Jan van Nieuwenhuizen
Fred Weenig says cooperation across the business lines is already
embedded in the Netherlands. Wholesale Clients Netherlands
(WCN) has nine regional teams across the Netherlands for mid
corporates, set up to provide the member banks' clients with the
full array of wholesale banking products. In addition, Professional
Products and GFM both have specialists working in the regions.
Crucially, all of these specialists are housed together and present
one face to local clients. And thanks to clear governance, there is
no conflict about who 'owns' a particular cliënt. All the transactions
are booked directly to the member banks themselves. Weenig:
'The overriding rule is that the relationships are local. Our biggest
differentiator in the Netherlands is our network of local banks.
We'd be fools not to make full use of that."
Looking at pillar I, leadership in the Netherlands, booked combined
wholesale revenues of around EUR 1.2 billion in 2010, across WCN,
GFM and Professional Products. Weenig notes: "It's already
happening, but imagine what we could do if we truly thought in
terms of the pillars. We have budgeted EUR 1.4 billion for 2011,
the increase being first and foremost based on better alignment
and cooperation between departments. We have to think of the
Rabobank organisation as a matrix, crossing all the boundaries
between country and regional operations and all the product
groups. Every contribution we make to that matrix is a contri-
bution to our strategie pillars."
What this all boils down to, says Peter Howell, is how we see
ourselves. Do we see ourselves as individual Profït Loss
accounts (P&Ls) or as part of something much bigger? Howell:
"We should see ourselves in terms of how much value we are
"Cooperation should flow naturally from the common agenda set
in the Rabobank International Wholesale strategy", says Jan van
Nieuwenhuizen. This common agenda is built around three pillars
- leadership in F&A, leadership in the Netherlands and leveraging
the bank's specialisations, which derive from Rabobank's overall
ambition to be the leading global Food and Agribusiness (F&A)
bank and the leading all-finance bank in the Netherlands. To
achieve these ambitions, Rabobank has to get closer to its clients
and make full use of all its skills and product capabilities. On top
of that, cooperation and cross-sell should become second nature
right across the bank. Van Nieuwenhuizen: "In any client-facing
situation, we have to think in terms of what are the right solutions
for that cliënt at that time, and that thinking has to include the
likes of Professional Products or Global Financial Markets' (GFM)
products. Achieving global F&A leadership goes beyond any
individual franchise. It depends on the combined successofthe
regional and sector teams, and all the business and product lines."
