Bas Brouwers
Member of the Managing Board
and Chief Financial Officer
About this
Report
Chairman's
Foreword
Corporate
Management Report Appendices Governance
Consolidated Financial Company Financial
Statements Statements
I experienced 2018 as the year in which we
made important steps in preparing the bank
for the future. We have been working on the
transformation of our bank for a couple of
years now. We are taking multiple steps to
anticipate on a changing environment and on
a different banking landscape. This entails a
shift in mindset with more forward looking
focus. Our mission, "growing a better world
together," adds cohesion to that process. For
me it is a real bonus to do our work in that
context.
In my view, we achieved the next level in the
translation of the four pillars of our strategy
(Rock-Solid Bank, Empowered Employees,
Meaningful Cooperative and Excellent
Customer Focus) into concrete initiatives and
ambitions. This further improved the clarity of
our strategic direction, further aligning the
mindset across the bank towards our overall
mission. To be able to deliver on this mission
sustainably in the future, we are committed to
remaining the rock-solid bank we are today. I
am proud of the progress we made in recent
years: we strengthened our capital position,
we diversified our funding mix, and we
continued to optimize our balance sheet in
anticipation of future regulatory
requirements.
When working for a bank, the significance of
relevant skill sets is in continuous flux. The
increasing amount of data enables us to
evaluate future scenarios with greater
accu racy. These hard facts and the data-driven
way of working enable us to deliver more
valuable advice to our colleagues and our
customers. It also means that our professionals
in the Finance domain need to have different
skills and competencies. We are constantly
looking for extraordinary data expertise and
analytical skills to drive the transformation
towards a data-driven organization forward.
One issue which gives us pause for thought is
how to strike a balance between investing
effectively in a healthy bank for the long term
while improving our cost efficiency for the
short term. It's a challenging set of
considerations and it's important to
continuously find the right emphasis at the
right time. As far as the cost/income ratio is
concerned, we are still falling behind our
target. But at the same time, we are investing
in a strong, stable bank with afantastic mission
in a digitalizing world.
