Alexander Zwart (Rabobank): ‘We will not settle for over complexity’

You have been in office as CITO and a member of the group management for over a year now, what are your most important insights?
‘I feel at home here. An advantage is that I know the bank well. I have already held various management positions at Rabobank, although the number and breadth of items on the agenda is now larger than I was used to. Another major change is that I can no longer look for support higher up but must make decisions myself. Of course, I do this in collaboration with the team, but the buck stops with me. It also takes some time to get into the rhythm. For example, every Monday there is a meeting of the board of directors that requires thorough preparation. I understand what the supervisory board expects from me. In turn, I expect my team to work according to a clear management agenda.’

What gives you the most satisfaction?
‘That I can solve the puzzle myself and, as the person ultimately responsible, tackle the challenges that I encountered in my previous roles. I enjoy a complex puzzle.’

What drives you as a manager?
‘For me, the glass is always half full. Without being naive, I believe in the good in people. At their core, people come to work to do their best. By offering them a good working environment and culture, I think I can get or keep people on the right track. I enjoy my work every day, that is my driving force. It gives me energy.’

How do you deal with contradiction?
‘I am no longer one of the guys, you experience that distinctly in a managerial role. I am not omniscient. I do my best to be open and transparent. I ask for feedback. From the supervisory board, but also from colleagues. Hopefully people dare to be blunt, because they know that I will not hold it against them. I will always seek out people who are smart and not afraid to speak out. Outside of Rabobank as well.’

Rabobank CEO Stefaan Decraene believes that the bank should become less cumbersome and complex. However, banks run on complex IT infrastructure with often old systems. How do you want to reduce this complexity?
‘I believe that simplification is necessary, and we are working hard on that. The IT architecture of a bank is by nature very complex. Realizing that this is the case does not mean that we accept it. We reduce complexity by assigning significant responsibility to our teams. In 2018, we started working agilely and we have extended this to all our IT-supported product development. Worldwide, more than 15,000 colleagues already work agile in multidisciplinary teams, which are self-managing and whose members each have their own specialism. We have 1,100 squads at Rabobank. Each of these squads runs a part of the IT landscape. We use quarterly rhythms. At the beginning, we set goals. On the way to these goals, we identify blockages that materialize, and we intervene. These quarterly rhythms have a delivery mode that allows us to achieve results quickly.
In addition, we can reduce complexity through standardization. If you want the customer journey to run as smoothly as possible, the engineer must be able to perform his or her work as straightforward as possible. This means that we support the engineers as best we could with tools to do their work and that we stimulate as much reuse of IT services as possible – the so-called managed standardized services. By using these standardized IT services, it is easy for a team to be compliant.’

How do you ensure a balance between administrative and executive disciplines? In other words: how do you assist IT in meeting the demands of the board?
‘One of the things we have introduced is the provider-consumer model. For example, there are squads that develop an IT service that is compliant and meets our usability and security requirements. We call these squads providers. This IT service is then used by several other squads, the consumers. This way of working ensures that the consuming squads can spend as much time as possible on renewing the service provision, while still meeting the requirements that we set as a bank. We do this, for example, with the Rabo Online Platform, which is used by more than 150 teams to develop our Banking app, internet banking and websites. The provider facilitates the consumer. That too is agile working. The benefit of this is that different disciplines work together in squads. For example, a product manager works together with an engineer, a marketer with a solution architect, and so on, with the result that there no longer is a traditional separation between management and innovation.
I like to take the efficiency of Formula 1 as an example. Everything there is thought through down to the last detail. The technicians in the pit lane know that team effort is as valuable as the best engine. If one small part is missing, or even if the car gets assembled in a place that is not clean, it will not win the race. That mindset appeals to me. An organization is a living organism that continuously demands attention. And if something does not work, you must dare to reset instead of allowing it to pile up, as we tend to do with legislation and regulations. I believe in resets as an operating model. Starting over, with a clean slate.’

Rabobank’s profit rose by eighteen percent last year to 5.2 billion euros. These are impressive numbers, but they also bear the risk that the bank loses its appetite to think innovative. How do you deal with that?
‘You need to repair the roof while the weather is good. Good profit figures is precisely the signal to concern yourself with structurally keeping the cost level competitive in the long term. The group management is on the same page in this respect. Everyone understands that it is important to improve quality and reduce costs when things are going well.’

Rabobank is a major IT employer. How do you deal with the war on talent and how do you ensure that good people stay on board?
‘Our position on the labour market is good. One fifth of the bank consists of IT professionals. We also compete with IT companies outside the financial sector. Many young IT specialists want to work at Rabobank. This is because they are given the opportunity to independently experiment with the latest technology early in their careers. They experience considerable autonomy because they work in small-scale teams and therefore see direct results from their efforts. Take payment transactions, for example, which is a challenging domain because of its scale, social impact and the value it represents: millions of transactions pass through it every day. This attracts ambitious IT professionals who want to get the best out of themselves. We continue to look for talent, but because we are an attractive employer, they also approach us of their own accord.’

Backing the Rabo banking app is an ingenious system of automated instructions. What is your vision on the generative AI trend that is occupying many a boardroom?
‘We have an innovation funnel to evaluate whether an idea we have is in fact a solution to a problem that the customer experiences. New technology should never become more important than the problem you are trying to solve. We classify transactions in the Rabo App using an algorithm, so that customers gain insight into the things they are spending money on. We are already using GenAI in potential application areas. Think of summarizing customer conversations. If these are generated automatically, customer service people can focus on the conversation instead of their to-do list. Incident management also is a possible use case. If technology can help us register incidents, we build up a source of contextual information to analyse. We test many various use cases to assist us in making optimal decisions.
It is essential that AI increases value and that there are no risks associated with it. One of the measures to manage risks is the human in the loop; we have people involved in every process. We often discuss scenarios in the boardroom. These are practical but also strategic scenarios. We follow training courses on the possibilities of AI and regularly get updates from experts. Consultants give you the impression that you have to act now, otherwise you will fall behind, but I think it is more important to have the risks under control and to know exactly what we leave to AI and what not. The bank manages sensitive data, which is why safety and reliability come first. I think we should be careful to overreact.’

How do you view the competition from payment service providers that are taking market share in primary processes?
‘Banks did not always realise in good time how big e-commerce would become. And that transactions could also take place online exclusively and via different payment methods. Payment service providers have stepped into that niche. Banks cannot be the best in all areas. It is good that there is competition. That keeps us sharp. We focus on our services via the Rabo App, which has very good ratings, especially among young people. That is the playing field on which we want to win.’

The rapid developments in technology predict a dynamic year for the banks. Where do you get your inspiration from to be prepared for that?
‘Working inspires me, I learn something new every day. I also like to go to conventions and listen to many podcasts. What makes that valuable is that by hearing different voices, you find the nuance in the everyday discourse. That way I can separate the hype from the reality. We are inclined to rely on statistics and forecasts. But predictions are never 100 percent correct. That is why I believe that you need to demystify technology. Just as life is unpredictable, so is the economy. I believe that Rabobank has the agility to adapt to the changes driven by technological innovations. We have agile teams and standardized procedures and not to forget, ambitious professionals on board. We have enormous potential to improve ourselves even further.’

This interview was published in Management Scope 04 2025.