Contents Introduction Management report Appendices Corporate governance Consolidated Financial Statements Company Financial Statements
confirms the course we are taking and guides our actions as
a cooperative bank.The increase in employee motivation is
appropriate to the current phase of our overall transformation.
We have confidence in the measures we are taking to address
employee motivation and are grateful for their continued
dedication to Rabobank in these turbulent times.
In all, we are proud that we are on track to achieving the goals
set in the Strategic Framework 2016-2020. Yet our ambitions
go beyond the results to date. We must pick up even more
speed, particularly in our digital transition and innovation
efforts, to continue offering our customers the best possible
service. We laid a solid foundation for this in 2017. And like in
any organisation in transition some things go according to plan
while others are more challenging, and sometimes even present
dilemma's.
Keeping up with the implementation of new regulation needs
attention. Rabobank runs a complex portfolio of IT change
programmes. It requires extra management attention, time
and costs to implement new policies and procedures in
the changing organisation. We also implemented a global
programme on customer due diligence, encompassing
governance, education, conduct and tools. We monitor a large
portfolio of customer relationships and transactions worldwide
and address new adverse external signals throughout the entire
organisation.That also means that we sometimes need to end
customer relationships or decline transactions. We assigned a
task to a committee to review the target operating model of the
local Rabobanks in order to increase customer focus, increase
the contribution to the regional economy, improve operational
management and reduce costs.The outcome is planned for 2018.
In June we announced the formation of a new management
structure. In the new Managing Board, all key customer
segments are represented at the executive level. Group-wide
attention for digitalisation and talent at the highest executive
management level gives us a closer fit with the change agenda
of the cooperative Rabobank. Each of my fellow members
of the Managing Board will introduce themselves and their
business later in this report. Suffice to say here that I am proud
to chair such a driven and diverse team and to be leading
the bank forward together. I would also like to express our
deep appreciation and thanks to Rien Nagel and Ralf Dekker
who stepped down in September.They brought distinctive
leadership to Rabobank during their long careers at the bank.
We wish them all the best for the future.
Taking a stand on issues that matter is also key to the personal
and professional development of our employees. In 2017,
we redesigned the leadership profiles; they now emphasise
leadership through connection in the community in addition
to personal and team leadership. We seek to empower our
employees and leaders by asking them: What do you need
to achieve personal growth as well as growth in and for your
team? How are you helping to grow a better world together?
This applies to the whole bank, to our customers and their
communities.
In the Strategic Framework 2016-2020, Rabobank adopted a
clear strategy for improvement with Performance Now.This
programme has had major consequences for our staffing levels,
reducing them by approximately 7,000 jobs so far with another
5,300 set to go between 2018 and 2020. Job loss is an issue
across the financial sector, but our mobility centres are proving
effective in helping many of those who we had to let go. The
initial figures show that almost half ofthis group found a job
or started their own business within six months of being made
redundant.ln 2018 the focus will shift to starting support earlier,
in the active mobility phase. Research shows that the earlier
employees start working on developing a new perspective, the
more likely they are to succeed in finding a new challenge.
Many of our employees are migrating from local Rabobanks to
centralised regionalised service centres.This move will benefit
our client service because it will boost our speed and efficiency
and reduce back office costs. Our cost reduction efforts are
mostly on target, with increased efficiency in many parts of
Rabobank, in line with our strategic plan. However additional
efforts in IT and follow-up work on for example SME derivatives
and other one-offs led to an increase in overall costs for the
year. We need to continue focusing intensively on cost control
to achieve structural efficiency gains to further reduce our cost-
to-income ratio, leveraging the benefits of further digitalisation
and building scale in back-office activities.
The past few years have been particularly challenging for our
employees. In the Organisational Health Index taken at the start
of 2017, they expressed a need fora clearer sense of direction
and purpose. We have addressed this in our new mission,
Growing a better world together, which is a clear statement
of that purpose. On behalf of the Managing Board, I sincerely
thank our employees for their intensive efforts in 2017 and look
forward to the growth we can achieve together in 2018.
Rabobank Annual Report 2017
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