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.

Rabobank Bronnenarchief

Annual Reports Rabobank | 2018 | | pagina 48