This is what mature
banking is about
Peter Howell:
COVER STORY WORKING TOGETHER
Peter Hotvell
Sweet mix
regulated but once the business is won you are likely to hold
on to it for the long term. Of course, it helps that Robeco has a
great reputation and our clients are attracted to the CSR angle
it offers," he adds.
about putting together the right team with the right solutions.
Van Nieuwenhuizen: "We are taking a much more multi-
product approach, but we still make mistakes. Sometimes
we try to keep too many options open or we get the timing
wrong by committing ourselves too early or too late. To take
full advantage of defining moments for our clients, we have to
make sure we have the right resources in place, and we have
to learn to do that more effectively and more quickly."
It's hardly surprising that Rabobank is experiencing growing
pains, given that it is making a rapid transition from being
primarily a lending bank to a multi-product wholesale bank.
But, Howell says, "this is what mature banking is about. It is a
much more sophisticated way of banking that requires a more
sophisticated approach. You have to communicate better
and make more choices. And whether you're successful or not
depends on whether you make the right choices. You have to
piek the right clients and offer the right products at the right
time."
With this in mind, Rabobank has also stepped up its efforts
to increase cooperation between Wholesale Clients Inter
national (WCI) and three Rabobank daughter organisations:
asset manager Robeco, private bank Sarasin and leasing
specialist De Lage Landen (DLL). And making these an integral
part of cliënt approaches right from the start is already bearing
fruit. Robeco, for one, has taken a systematic approach to
cooperation since 2010, Howell says, and a pilot project
with WCI relationship managers in France and the UK last year
has already led to a promising pipeline of new business with
the pension funds of major UK clients. "It takes time to win
new clients, as the pensions market is conservative and highly
Leasing is an important add-on for some wholesales clients,
but WCI is also looking to use DLL's receivables management
systems to back up WCI's receivables financing product.
Another attractive development is the cooperation between
Rabobank Wholesale and Sarasin, which presents an
additional range of opportunities. Howell: "Sarasin is a great
example of the potential we have for cross-sell, both in the
Netherlands and internationally. For instance, we were
arranging the sale of a company in Poland and we needed
an offshore solution. Sarasin put that together very quickly. On
another occasion, we had a company in Ireland, where one
shareholder wanted to buy out another shareholder. They
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