Rabobank’s chief digital transformation officer considers himself to be the “turbocharger” of its digital agenda. He talks to Joy Macknight about transforming the bank into a fast-moving, agile organisation. 

Bart Leurs

Bart Leurs

Rabobank is a co-operative bank, embracing collaboration from its inception. It is a universal bank in the Netherlands, as well as a specialised food and agri-business bank in 38 countries. The Dutch bank’s digital strategy has three objectives: to become a data-driven digital bank; to innovate within and beyond banking; and to construct an agile organisation and future-proof its technology.

Career history: Bart Leurs 

  • 2017 Rabobank, chief digital transformation officer
  • 2016 Rabobank, head of fintech and innovation
  • 2015 ING Belgium, head of daily banking
  • 2012 ING Belgium, head of products and operations for lending and insurance

To become a data-driven digital bank, Rabobank’s starting point is the smartphone, which has increasingly become many people’s life companion. Chief digital transformation officer Bart Leurs reports that more than 70% of customers use Rabobank’s digital platform and almost two-thirds of new customers are digitally onboarded. “We have brought the bank to the app, as client interaction has dramatically shifted from face to face to digital,” he says.

The Payment Services Directive 2, and open banking generally, is an enabler of this objective and Mr Leurs is a fan because “it opens up innovation and creates new opportunities for the bank, our clients and new entrants”. As a result, the bank has become more open and other banks are now appearing in Rabobank’s mobile app, to give multi-banked clients a better oversight of their finances.

Mr Leurs believes that collaborative business models will have a major impact on data and the way organisations deal with data will be a differentiator. He says: “We want to ensure that customers understand what it means to give consent to share their data and that we deal with data in a way that is beneficial to the client.” As such, Rabobank is developing a consent dashboard to help clients control their data.

Innovation drive

As to its second objective, Rabobank innovates in line with its mission of “growing a better world together” and Mr Leurs explains how this is split out for the three client groups. “In the Netherlands, we look at private individuals’ financial wellbeing, ensuring that clients can plan and have good insights into their financial health,” he says.

For example, Rabobank launched Peaks, a robo investment tool for millennials. When a customer pays with their debit card, Peaks rounds up to the next highest number and invests the change in sustainable funds. The bank also added categorisation to its mobile app, so customers can gain insights into current spending behaviour. “This is fully automated by artificial intelligence algorithms,” adds Mr Leurs.

For its business customers, Rabobank launched Tellow, a bookkeeping app for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to help them focus on running their business. It also released Easytrade for foreign exchange, which is already being used by 1200 SMEs, and Fundr, which is a new way of lending based on machine learning. “For customers needing a loan, we receive consent to access to their bank account and history, and then we can offer a loan for up to €250,000 in just a few minutes,” explains Mr Leurs.

Foodtech fixes

As a food and agri-bank, Rabobank’s goal is to fix the inefficiencies in the food value chain. As such, it looks at developments in the food and agri space, especially companies that are enabling a platform economy. Mr Leurs highlights examples in India and Africa where small farmers are moving onto platforms and running farms from their smartphones.

Through Rabo Frontier Ventures, the bank invested in AgroStar, an e-commerce platform for small farmers in India. “Much data is generated through the platform that we can use to do a better credit assessment and help small farmers scale up their business,” says Mr Leurs. It is also collaborating with Conservis, a platform for the big US farmers that collects data generated from tractors, drones or ground sensors used to detect moisture, for example.

Mr Leurs continues: “While this fits our mission, it is also strategically important and provides opportunities to move into new areas, such as becoming a platform player for farmers globally and helping them to grow their business.”

Agility and openness

With regards to Rabobank’s third objective, Mr Leurs says: “As a big corporate, we will never be as fast as a start-up, but the winners of the future will be those organisations that can respond quickly to change.” Thus, Rabobank decided to move to a fully agile organisation.

It started with a digital hub in the Netherlands, testing the agile method of working together in small teams with greater responsibility and decisioning power to move fast. In the first six months, it grew the digital hub to 300 employees and has scaled to 3000 staff in the past six months. Due to its initial success, the bank plans to roll out this methodology internationally.

The other piece is technology and Mr Leurs reports that Rabobank is moving quickly to cloud and has implemented microservices. “We want to move to a more open set-up because we believe that the innovations that will have the biggest impact on society and clients will be those that we do in collaboration with others,” he says.

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