Bart Leurs
Member of the Managing Board
and Chief Digital Transformation
Officer
Chairman's
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of new ventures. One of them isTellow,an app
that helps self-employed people managetheir
bookkeeping and prepare their tax returns. In
cooperation with other banks, in 2018 we
launched several innovative start-ups, scale-
ups, and blockchain platforms that make it
easier for our customers to manage their
international business.
We help our customers with their own
innovations too. For example, we are
cooperating with innovation centers like Robo
Valley in Delft, where entrepreneurs can
benefit from a free Robo-scan courtesy of
Rabobank. Our FoodBytes! platform has
created an ecosystem of start-ups and scale-
ups who share our ambitions for an innovative
food value chain. This has already led to
interaction with more than 1,200 ventures.
It all fits perfectly with our objective of helping
customers, private and wholesale alike, to
grow. And at the same time, I also consider this
increased focus on digitalization and
innovation as the motor that will bring us
closer to achieving our mission, 'Growing a
better world together'.
Open Banking and PSD2 will soon change the
landscape in which financial institutions
operate. New entrants- like those from the
tech sector-will create more competition and
more choices for customers. Mostly, that is a
good thing since it will lead to better products
and higher quality. But greater competition
also brings new challenges. Customers need
to think more carefully about "their" data and
who they wish to share it with, especially their
financial data. Open Banking is also an
opportunity. It gives us room to innovate so
we can develop better products and services.
That way we can give our customers even
better insight and oversight, now and in the
future.
The adoption rate of digital banking has
soared in the past few years. Digital is the new
normal for many of our customers. Our
ambition is to satisfy any digital wishes our
customers could possibly have, so that
anything they would like to do online can be
done online. Since most of our customers
always have digital devices at hand, they carry
their bank around with them. Online banking
is actively used by 61.8% of our private
customers and 80.8% of our corporate
customers.
We are always working on new innovations to
help our customers. Many were pitched at our
Moonshot campaign, leading to the creation