CFO Bas Brouwers: Belief in tech and AI
> Want to read the full analysis? You can find it here: Constantly Evolving: The CFO in 2026.
Bas Brouwers’ move from ING to Rabo caused a sensation in 2015. The banking talent’s career move was compared in the media to a soccer player transferring from Ajax to Feyenoord – or vice versa.
Brouwers, born in Meppel, joined Rabo during an extremely hectic period. It was partly up to him to clean house after the Libor affair and a scandal involving interest rate derivatives. ‘Almost all of those things happened long before we started working here,’ Brouwers was quoted as saying when he had just started at Rabo (along with then-CEO Wiebe Draijer, the ‘we’ Brouwers refers to). ‘I want to look to the future, do something new.’
And that’s exactly what Brouwers did. Under his leadership, the bank underwent a massive transformation in which thousands of jobs were cut, traditional bank branches disappeared from the streetscape, business lines were shut down, and the bank grew into one of the Netherlands’ leading digital banks. It wasn’t without its challenges. Brouwers in de Volkskrant in 2017: ‘I started here just as people had been told that nearly a quarter of the jobs would have to be cut. Believe me, that’s not the right time to highlight what Rabobank is proud of. Just imagine. Employees are being let go, local banks are losing some of their autonomy, but oh yes, Rabobank is absolutely wonderful. Now we have moved on, and it is indeed time to bring Rabobank’s true essence back into the spotlight.’
What sets Brouwers apart from many traditional financial executives is his fascination with technological innovation. Within Rabobank, he champions data-driven decision-making. In an interview with cfo.nl: ‘The possibilities of data and new digital technologies are evolving at breakneck speed. You can provide highly granular and predictive insights in a way that was simply impossible in the past. Rabobank is fully embracing this trend.’