WEALTH BRIEFING AWARDS - BEST INNOVATIVE CLIENT SOLUTION : INTERVIEW OF CAROLINA DI CENTA

What sets you apart from your peers this year and why ? 

C.D.C. Year 2020 has been a challenging year around the globe. We focused on integrating digital solutions to our investment offering, not only to facilitate client access but also to create unique client experiences. For instance, for our offering on sustainable and impact investments, we created an interactive digital customer experience called myImpact designed to raise clients’ awareness on sustainable finance and to define their social and environmental priorities. Overall, 2020 has really been a year of growth for our digital footprint : we raised by 30% our client sessions on our digital solutions. Interestingly, this was not a peak in activity due to the pandemic, but rather a long-lasting behavioural change towards digital, which we continue to observe. 

How have your colleagues contributed towards the success of your organization?

C.D.C One of the key success factor of a digital project is the ability to work as a team across divisions and in our case across countries as well. In fact, our digital platform is co-created across Singapore, Luxembourg, Chennai and Paris. I am based in Geneva but I interact as much with my international colleagues as my local ones, if not more! Every team contributes based on their local expertise. For us, in Geneva, it is client advisory, which enabled us to launch BeAdvised, a digital solution allowing clients to receive personalised investment recommendations and news flow. 

What are you going to do to stay on the front foot in a fast-growing but also challenging region such as this?

C.D.C I often joke that we are not technology "geeks" but rather client "geeks". This client focus will always be the highest standard that we should hold ourselves to. Furthermore, I believe that our success comes from product owners working closely with our growth hackers from the inception of the product. Indeed, rather than seeing innovation as a linear sequential process, we strive to integrate growth hacking’s tools and tricks from very early product designs to ensure client adoption. For this year, we are focusing on client communication and personalisation of experience while continuing to improve our core banking experience.

What have been the challenges you have to overcome to reach such a standard?

C.D.C During industrialisation, combining agility at scale and integration with legacy systems continues to be an equilibrium to master. Currently, we are aiming at combining the highest standard of security that we want to keep offering to our clients while promoting speed of deployment and rapid iteration. 

Whom do you look to for inspiration and ideas?

C.D.C Clients are, as it should be, our strongest source of inspiration. We found that a combination of Net Promoter Score®, usage analytics, ad-hoc interviews and co-creation sessions provide us the most complete picture. We also strive to leverage the global BNP Paribas ecosystem to replicate ideas or solutions from other divisions of the Group. For the future, we would also like to strengthen our partnerships with Fintech internationally as we take advantage of open-banking opportunities for our clients.

What do you hope will be the result this accolade and how does it help your business in the region?

C.D.C We are thankful and proud to receive the “Best Private Bank for Innovative Client Solution in Europe” award. I hope to highlight the complementary role of digital in all our banking relationships and to continue increase our digital footprint and offering. Building on this success, I would like to expand as well the use of methodologies such as Design Thinking or Agile in non-digital projects to accelerate a cultural shift towards iterative client-centered innovation throughout the whole organisation.