Voice-over: This is Leaders in Finance, a podcast where we learn more about the people behind a successful career. We speak with the leaders of today and tomorrow to discuss their motivations, their organizations, and their personal lives. Why? Because the financial sector could use a little more honest conversation. Our guest this episode is the CEO of a large bank and has extensive experience in the financial sector. No one holds the single key to success, but our guest can certainly share a piece of it.
Vincent: Part of being successful is also being disciplined—habitizing certain things, which often makes it much easier to keep yourself honest.
Voice-over: He hardly ever succumbs to fear by controlling what he can control and letting go of the rest. So, does nothing scare him?
Vincent: Your vulnerability is often in your children. When I think about fear, it’s not even so much for myself. It’s more for the ones I really love.
Voice-over: And who is his biggest hero?
Vincent: Roger Federer. Aside from being incredibly talented and gifted, he’s such a pleasant person. The way he looks at competition—for example, how he views his competitors as friends.
Voice-over: Our guest this episode is Vincent Goedegebuure, CEO of NatWest Europe. Your host is Jeroen Broekema.
Jeroen: Welcome to a new episode of Leaders in Finance. This week’s guest is Vincent Goedegebuure, CEO of NatWest Europe. Welcome, Vincent.
Vincent: Thank you very much, Jeroen. Happy to be here.
Jeroen: I’m very happy you’re here as our guest on Leaders in Finance. Before I introduce you, I’d like to thank the partners of Leaders in Finance for their ongoing support. They are Kayak, EY, Medirect, and Roland Berger. We’re very grateful to our partners. Now, let’s move on to my guest. As is tradition, I’ll start by spelling out his name, which is quite a long one today. So, Vincent is V-I-N-C-E-N-T, and his last name, Goedegebuure, is G-O-E-D-E-G-E-B-U-U-R-E. Vincent has been CEO of NatWest Europe since May 2022. He began his career as a tax advisor at PwC Netherlands in 1997. After working at Citigroup in London and New York, he joined ABN AMRO in 2005. There, he held various leadership positions, including Head of Global Markets within the Corporate and Institutional Banking division. His last position at ABN AMRO was Global Head of Client Coverage within CIB. Regarding his education, Vincent earned his bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Groningen. He also completed an MBA at IESE Business school and studied law for one year at Queen’s University. He’s 52 years old, married, has two children, and lives in Amsterdam. That is a short introduction to your life and a little bit about your personal life as well. As listeners know, I love to start by understanding the organization you represent—NatWest—using a stakeholder approach. So maybe we could start with customers and clients. Obviously, you have NatWest Europe, which you cover, and then you have NatWest Global, which is a huge company. So maybe you can tell us a bit about both. Could you tell me more about the customers of NatWest?
Vincent: Yes I will do so. And thank you, Jeroen, for this opportunity. If you look at NatWest Group, it is one of the larger banks in the UK, very much a high street bank, with 60,000 employees and almost 20 million customers. Anyone who has been to the UK will have seen it on nearly every street corner—it is very visible in the UK market. In Europe, we focus on what we call the top segment of the CIB market—Corporate and Institutional Banking. We serve large corporates in continental Europe, as well as funds and sponsors, and we focus on what we call FIG customers (FIs) within that specific space. For those who have been around longer, NatWest is the former RBS, which actually acquired ABN AMRO in 2008. Interestingly, the entity I lead in continental Europe still operates under the former ABN AMRO license. Our customer base is highly focused—large corporates, funds and sponsors, and FIG. We serve them through our Amsterdam office, where I am based, but we also have offices in Luxembourg, Germany, France, Sweden, and Italy.
Jeroen: Right. And regarding other stakeholders, such as colleagues—how many people serve the customer base in Europe?
Vincent: In Europe, we have around 500 people spread across six different offices. Of course, we tap very much into our mothership, the nucleus in the UK. So when we work with our customers, we often do so through teams sourced from different European locations, as well as from our UK colleagues. This gives us much more bandwidth than just the 500 colleagues we have on the ground in continental Europe.
Jeroen: Yeah, I can imagine. And maybe combining these two perspectives—when you serve a customer, how often is it really a Dutch customer, for example? Or are most of your clients from the US or the UK, expanding into continental Europe?
Vincent: Yeah, so you’re probably referring to inbound and outbound customers. For NatWest in Europe, it is crucial that we have our edge, our USP. The majority of our customers in continental Europe have a strong UK connection. We focus on the UK nexus—what operations does a large European corporate have in the UK? Because that is where we can add something special: our UK expertise. We can bring the whole bank to our European customers through their UK operations. We believe our ideal customer has a UK nexus. That could be a European company with operations in the UK or an outbound company expanding from the UK into continental Europe. That is where we aim to be most relevant to our customer base.
Jeroen: Yeah, because when are you most relevant? What is the reason that a large corporate starts working with you and not, for example, with a local bank here?
Vincent: We have a couple of areas where we believe we really add value, particularly on the capital markets side. We support corporates, banks, and sponsors with large funding programs that need to tap into the institutional market. We also have a strong position in climate and ESG, whether through capital market issuances or various advisory services. Additionally, we have a well-established platform for trading—both in FX and rates, as well as derivatives. In continental Europe, we have a strong presence in structured finance, that can project finance, that can be leveraged finance. That’s how we are relevant for our customers in this region. When these customers also have a presence in the UK, we can support them with a broad range of additional products, including more plain vanilla offerings like cash management, transaction banking, trade, and guarantees. That’s how we bring the full scope of our bank to our customers. Most of the customers we serve are highly international. They often work with syndicates of 10, 20, or even more banks—some more the local or domestic bucket, others in the American or UK buckets. We are one of the banks that fits into the international banking category.
Jeroen: This is helpful. Thanks a lot. Moving on to another stakeholder—the regulator. Just before we started, you told me that you operate directly under the European Central Bank, correct?
Vincent: Yes, that’s correct. This is all public information; you can find it in our annual accounts. As a European entity, we are a 100% subsidiary of the NatWest Group. On January 1, 2024, we moved to ECB supervision after surpassing the €30 billion threshold, which the ECB often uses as a benchmark for supervision. We are now in our second year under ECB oversight. This transition wasn’t entirely new to us. When all European banks moved to ECB supervision in 2014, the former RBS—the predecessor of NatWest—was also placed under ECB supervision. However, as we became smaller in 2016-2017, we transitioned back to national supervision under the DNB. In banking, institutions sometimes grow and sometimes shrink. Given our growth trajectory in recent years, we have now moved back under ECB supervision.
Jeroen: Is it very different?
Vincent: I think, in a way, some things are very similar. Sometimes people really want to look for the differences between regulators, but regulators across the globe have a different or similar way of interacting. If you look at the ECB compared to the DNB, it’s the same type of regulation that we are held accountable for. So in that sense, there’s not a big difference. I think the main difference could be in intensity. The ECB is an institution that is incredibly thorough and on top of things. I would say they conduct quite a few thematic reviews that they apply to the whole industry. The industry is currently going through stress testing, which happens every other year. That’s quite an intense process. We also believe it’s a process that helps us because, while we obviously have our own stress testing, being assessed by a regulator and compared to our peers is actually a really good thing. So I would say there are a lot of commonalities between regulators, though the ECB sometimes has different focus areas or specifics that they find important.
Jeroen: And in terms of time, do you spend a lot of time managing the relationship with the regulator and handling everything you need to do?
Vincent: Yes, clearly, I have my meetings with the regulator, supported by an incredibly strong team. I think everyone in banking has to deal with regulatory obligations. It’s not just a license to operate; it’s also a license to grow. I would say I spend a fair amount of my time with the regulator or, if not directly, ensuring that, in working with my teams, we remain compliant—both in letter and in spirit—with what the regulator expects from us.
Jeroen: Right. Another group of stakeholders is competition. If you take the perspective of a large Dutch corporate, who are they competing with to serve that customer? Who wants to build that relationship and have them as a client? What do you see as your competition—local banks, international banks, or others?
Vincent: It’s all of the above, all of the above. And I get this question quite often, whether I’m operating in a Dutch or German context, or when I’m in Milan. It comes down to three main categories: domestic champions, international banks, and Anglo-Saxon/American banks. Then, for some products, there are also boutiques and new entrants. So the competition is quite fierce—it’s a big universe. That said, the type of customers we deal with often work with multiple banks. They don’t just need one or two banks; they likely need three or four for specific products. A syndicate often consists of even more.
Jeroen: Yeah, so it feels like fierce competition. And at the same time, you work together in those syndicates, and all these companies have multiple banking relationships, as you said. But ultimately, from the perspective of a global footprint bank like yours, who would you consider your number one competitor? One or two names?
Vincent: I find that incredibly difficult to answer. In the UK, for example, you have a few domestic champions like ourselves—Lloyds and Barclays. From an international perspective, there’s not a single institution I would call our main competitor. And actually, I prefer to approach this from a position of strength. If we focus too much on competitors or compare ourselves to others too often, I don’t think that’s the right mindset. I’d rather start from our own strengths—what we bring to our customers. I truly believe that with the focus and nimbleness we have, particularly in Europe, we provide something important, valuable, and relevant.
Jeroen: Yeah, because earlier in this conversation, you mentioned the areas where you are particularly strong, and one of them is ESG—everything around ESG. Is that purely because there’s a lot of business to do there, or is there also a more moral reason for your involvement?
Vincent: Well, I would say both. I don’t think that we feel a moral obligation necessarily on climate and ESG. I think we feel a moral obligation towards all things that are relevant for society and where we, as an institution, as a bank, can play a specific role. So when it comes to climate and ESG, we can play a specific role as a financial institution in making sure that money flows to the areas where we believe we can make a difference.
We very much believe in our embedded institutional expertise around regulation, and climate and ESG are heavily regulated, although there was a bit of tailwind coming from the ECB with some relaxation around CSRD most recently. But with that trained muscle in really trying and having the capability to understand regulation, that is also a way we can add value when it comes to climate and ESG—when it comes to EU taxonomy, when it comes to interpretation. We can really support our customers.
So we very much feel that we, as an institution, have a role to play in the transition. If you look more at where the opportunity lies, climate and ESG, and all the spending we will see in that area, are going to be gigantic over the next decades and have already been quite impressive. So if you see where most of the financing is needed, where advisory services are required, and where we can bridge between institutional money and specific programs, I think that’s where we can play a role. So from that perspective, it’s also a profit pool. Whether you’re a capitalist or approaching it from a moral point of view, as you just referred to, I think it serves both perspectives. But we, as a bank, have a big role to play here.
Jeroen: Yeah, it makes sense. And obviously, you’re well aware of everything happening politically and geopolitically. You said there’s so much money going in this direction. Is this what we all hear right now? Is that all kind of on the sidelines? Are the ultimate trends moving in a certain direction, or is there actually less money going into, for example, climate change financing?
Vincent: Well, there’s obviously a lot of rhetoric coming from the West, particularly the US. My personal belief is that this is a very imminent issue for the world. Whether we like it or not, we really need to come together as a society, basically as a united global nation. A lot of money, investment, technology, and R&D are necessary to help the world through this transition. So I personally believe that the continuous investment required will continue to be there. Maybe we need a slightly different approach when it comes to labeling or framing certain aspects. In some parts of the world or among certain people, things may have been somewhat lost in translation. So I think it’s more a matter of labeling and framing than anything else, because the necessity of making these investments and focusing on this for the coming decades is not something that will change.
Voice-over: You’re listening to Leaders in Finance with Jeroen Broekema.
Jeroen: I’m just curious. I mentioned in my introduction that you took on this role in May 2022. How different has it been since then? Was it very different from your career before?
Vincent: Well, in a way, banking is banking. For the last 20 years or so, I’ve been working in banking. I’ve done that from Amsterdam for most of my career, but I’ve also been based in London and New York, as you mentioned in the introduction. Now, I’m working for a UK bank while being based in Amsterdam, rather than in the mothership, which is different from my previous 17 years at ABN AMRO.
The things that are similar to my previous banking experience are the same type of customers, products, and dynamics. But today, I’m working in an office located outside the mothership. From my perspective, it’s much more international, working with many colleagues across six different locations in Europe. In the Amsterdam office, where I’m based—though I travel quite a bit—we have over 30 different nationalities. And, of course, there’s a big UK component, which I actually very much appreciate and enjoy.
Jeroen: But you could also say that you have even more responsibility now. And on top of that, you’re much more of an external figure now, given that you’re running this business for Europe.
Vincent: Yes, well, sometimes I even feel like I’m more in hospitality than in banking. You’re there for customer dealings—often when you need to cut the ribbon, attend a closing dinner, or be present at the beginning and then somewhere in between, during the most important and sometimes most difficult part. Fortunately, I have incredibly capable people who handle that together with the customer. But there is indeed an element of being a figurehead and being present in the region. We have many visitors from the UK and other parts of the world, whom I connect with interesting people to get to know. So there’s quite a role to play in these ceremonial aspects, but also in ensuring that I represent the bank in the right way. I also help position people from the wider group into continental Europe. And it’s something I really enjoy—it’s a great addition to my role.
Jeroen: Yeah, you’re very calm about the change in your role, but still, I’d say it’s quite a lot of responsibility, a lot of people. So yeah, it’s great. When you started your career, it was at PwC. Why did you start there? Was that the plan, or did it just happen?
Vincent: Yeah, well, it’s a good question in the sense of—was it a plan, or was it more of an intuitive feeling? Sometimes I jokingly say, when people refer to me as having started my career as a tax consultant, well, nobody’s perfect. But how I ended up there is that I studied in Groningen, as you mentioned. I studied economics and then moved into fiscal economics. I actually quite enjoyed it. I was selected for a specific internship, I liked it—that was at PwC. I particularly liked the people I worked with, so I decided to take a permanent role there. But in the back of my mind, I always knew that this was probably not for the rest of my life.
Jeroen: Why was that?
Vincent: Because it’s quite a niche field. It’s a highly technical and specialized area. It’s very intellectually challenging, which I actually liked—it really shaped me as a professional. It strengthened my analytical thinking after spending a few years there. But I also knew that one day I would probably want to broaden my focus.
I wanted to work in an area that wasn’t just about tax. And that’s why, after completing a full-time MBA, I decided to embark on my journey into banking.
Jeroen: Yeah. How did that come about? What was the trigger? Or was it at some point the plan—I’m going to work at a bank? Or how did that happen?
Vincent: Well, so in 2001, I moved to Barcelona. I did my two-year MBA there. I would say 80–90% of people who do an MBA either end up as strategy consultants or go into banking. And this was years before the financial crisis. You know, being a banker was also like—that was sort of the holy grail. But given my work experience at PwC, where I actually focused on M&A, I was often just one small radar in an M&A trajectory. But I very much felt, having also worked with bankers back then, that it was probably something that would also fulfill my intellectual curiosity—to be a little bit more involved in different elements of dealing with customers. So I got recruited by Citigroup from campus. I spoke with a lot of other banks, but ultimately, I decided to join Citigroup. These were my first steps into banking—London, later New York—and I very much liked it. I actually loved it. And I’ve never regretted joining the financial industry.
Jeroen: What was work like, you know, being a Dutchman but working in financial services in London and the U.S.? Both places have a very different work ethic, I would say, from what you probably encounter here in the Netherlands. I mean, I’m not saying people here don’t work hard—some do, absolutely. But obviously, I think you would agree that London and New York are different environments to be in.
Vincent: Yeah. And when it comes to hard work—actually, if I go back in my memory to PwC, when I worked there, I also had to work quite hard, or rather, I wanted to work quite hard. But maybe New York was next level when it came to that. Maybe also because it was my first step into banking—things were new. I was changing the industry I was working in. I was also changing the country I was working in. And yes, I was first in London for a year, and then I moved to New York. So there were a lot of changes at the same time. But what I’ve always enjoyed about working hard—and trust me, I also like my personal life, I like time off—
Jeroen: I’ll come to that.
Vincent: But in a way, you also learn so much when you’re putting in more hours, when you get exposure to very interesting assignments. So I’ve always seen those years of working hard as a huge investment in myself, a really good way to develop myself and start to own it. So yes, it was different, but at the same time, there are a lot of commonalities whether you work in London, New York, or Amsterdam.
Jeroen: Right. I’m trying to picture you in New York. What was your age approximately?
Vincent: I was in my early 30s.
Jeroen: Living alone or with someone? In an apartment where you were working six, seven days a week? Or were you partying a lot? Can you give me a bit more color about your life there? I’m just curious.
Vincent: Yeah, I have a big smile on my face. I was single back then. I only met my wife when I moved back to Amsterdam. But sometimes I still miss that New York life. And then my wife tells me, Why do you miss that New York life? You don’t love me? You don’t love us? You regret that choice? No, I don’t. But New York, for me, is a phenomenal city. I worked hard, but I also played hard. It’s an incredible city from a business perspective, but also for food, social life, and culture. I lived in the Village, which I consider to be the best place in Manhattan. I had some really good friends there—inside the organization, but also some from outside. I had some MBA friends there. I even had a very good friend from high school who also ended up in New York. So it was a really, really good time. But sometimes you get a calling, and you decide to go back to your roots—which I did.
Jeroen: Yeah, what was it? What was the trigger? I wanted to ask you at some point, why did you leave New York for the Netherlands?
Vincent: Yeah, so I had been living abroad for five or six years. I’m a family man, and I felt that my family needed me. I think they were missing me. I was probably missing them as well, but maybe I was a little less vocal about it. Living abroad is really nice; it gives you so many different perspectives. But I also felt that this was the time to go back before I embarked on a journey where I might never return to Amsterdam. Or actually, I mean the Netherlands. I had been away for a long time, but not so long that I couldn’t come back. That was the decisive factor for me to move back—an intuitive decision, but one I have never regretted. I embarked on a new avenue, a new journey.
Jeroen: But it wasn’t that an opportunity came along and you thought, okay, this is a good moment. It was really a decision you made—I want to move back.
Vincent: Yeah, as I said, there was a calling in me—I wanted to go back. The organization I was working for was incredibly supportive, facilitating my return and even offering opportunities to continue working there. But I decided to embark on something new and joined ABN AMRO. So it started more from personal motivation than business motivation.
Jeroen: You talked a little bit about the hard work. What other cultural differences would you say exist between working in financial services in, for example, the US or London versus the Netherlands?
Vincent: Every culture is different, even within a country. If you move from one place to another, people will say, well, those folks over there are completely different. So tribalism is something that easily emerges. If you look at the differences between the UK and the Netherlands, the cliché is that the Dutch are too honest to be polite, and the Brits are too polite to be honest. And in every cliché, there’s a bit of truth. I think the British are a bit more implicit, while the Dutch tend to be more explicit and direct.
Jeroen: Is that rude or just direct?
Vincent: Yeah, well, I’ve really learned over time that we often take our own culture as the norm. But trust me, Dutch culture is not the norm. It’s not the norm. When I did my MBA in a class of over 200 people from 70 different nationalities, I realized that the Dutch are not the norm. In fact, we are an exception in how we deal with certain things. There’s a lot of good in that, but we also need to be humble. What we call honesty is often not perceived as the best way to interact or to get the best out of people in most parts of the world. I very much believe in diversity, because I truly think that when you bring different cultures together and treat each other with respect, you get the best results. So, going back to your question—how different was working in London or New York compared to Amsterdam? I think in a Dutch work environment, there’s a bit more room for social connectivity. It’s also a bit less hierarchical than in the US. The perception of hard work is different in the US than in the Netherlands. Those are the most obvious differences for me. But to come back to a broader point, I prefer to focus on commonalities—because in the end, there are also many things that aren’t that different from one country to another.
Jeroen: No, I agree. I’ve lived in the US and the UK, and all the things you mentioned, I agree with you. The other thing I would mention is that I met more people in the US and the UK, compared to the Netherlands, who are what I would call hungry – people who really want to put in the hours and go for it, whether in financial services, an NGO, or whatever it may be. But it could also be because I was in London and the big cities in the US, so that might be different from the rest of those countries as well, right?
Vincent: That’s a really good point. That’s a really good point. And it’s hungryness. It’s also a bit what we see at schools here in the Netherlands. Although that’s changing a little, when I look back to my time, academics, well, when you were studying in the Netherlands, you didn’t always study to get an A+. I studied in Canada at Queen’s University, where I did my MBA. There, getting a good score is something people find incredibly important. And actually, I find that quite inspiring and motivating because it’s also a way to develop yourself. It’s really about giving your best and becoming a better version of yourself. Of course, if there’s too much of that, it can turn bad. If a society becomes too competitive or too focused on comparing one person to another, it can lead to negative outcomes. But I think striving for excellence is something I found quite inspiring. So thanks for bringing it up, Jeroen, because I totally overlooked that.
Jeroen: I was adding something to your list, which I completely agree with. So that’s great. And if we go back a much longer time, to the way you were brought up, are you willing to share a bit about how you were raised?
Vincent: Yeah, with pleasure. I come from a family of five – father, mother, and two siblings. My parents had my older sister, who is three years older than I am, at a relatively young age, 22. My father has always been in academics. He’s a professor in literature. But he retired, so he’s in his seventies now. My mom was a banker; she worked for ABN AMRO. She worked for over 25 years in Leiden, the place where I grew up, as a mother of three children working. And we’re talking about the seventies, which was quite unusual at the time. So that’s my parents. I have an older sister and a younger brother. I always call him my younger brother, even though he turned 50 last week. The special thing, which I’m incredibly proud of, is that he’s adopted from Bangladesh. So, in a way, I feel blessed and privileged to have been exposed to that specific experience, which was really formative for me.
Jeroen: Wow. What was it like when your younger brother, who was really young at the time – now he’s not that young anymore – came into your family from outside? How old were you when he joined the family?
Vincent: Yeah, so this was in 1978. I was five, and he was three. So he was relatively old to be adopted from Bangladesh. I can vividly remember that we got a call – it’s still in our minds. We got a call, and apparently, my parents had been on the waiting list for a long time. This was really their thing: they wanted to adopt someone from another part of the world, someone they could give a future to. We got a call, and a couple of weeks later, we could pick him up from the airport. He came with a group of children from Bangladesh on a KLM flight. We were sitting in a lobby at Schiphol, and then, all of a sudden, we got a new little brother in our family. It was quite unique from so many perspectives, but also from the perspective that you go to the airport by car with four people, and you come back with five, and you have a brother.
Jeroen: And how was it for the family? Was it a huge change or not? Or was it just business as usual? Was there a “brother boom,” as if a new kid had been born?
Vincent: In a way, I think the latter, at least from my perspective, I was a young kid, I was five years old. What did I know about the world? But probably for my parents, surely for my parents, I think it was a different experience than when they got my sister and me, because that was a different sort of lead time. And he came at a much older age. But from my perspective, and also I think from my parents’ perspective and from my sister’s and brother’s perspective, in a way it went incredibly smoothly, which also says a little bit about his resilience, his flexibility. And I think it also says a lot about my parents, who also gave him the environment to feel loved and supported.
Jeroen: Great. Have you ever been to Bangladesh with him?
Vincent: No, no, I have not been to Bangladesh, but my parents and my brother did many years ago with an organized trip of kids who were adopted from Bangladesh.
Jeroen: What was the atmosphere in your family? You know, your mom in banking, your dad in academia. Maybe that has nothing to do with the atmosphere in family life, maybe it does, I don’t know.
Vincent: Yeah, well, I very much believe that your leadership story is also based on your personal story. So I look back at a very pleasant youth, with young parents, not only by age, but also by spirit and mind, very liberal, very progressive, not so much authority. Maybe I would have benefited a little bit from a little more authority. A lot of opportunities were given to us, a lot of responsibilities, which I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed. So that was the setup in our family. My father was often at home because when you’re in academics, you can also, well, now after COVID, everyone can work from home. But at that time, that was not so common. But my father, as a professor, could work quite a bit from home. So I have memories of my youth where my mom was leaving in the morning, but my father was still at home. And when I came back from elementary school for lunch, he was there, taking care of my sister, my brother, and me. So that’s a really good memory. So in a way, a very modern family in the ’70s.
Voice-over: You’re listening to Leaders in Finance with Jeroen Broekema.
Jeroen: A few months ago, I started with someone I think you happen to know quite well, Dan Dorner, still at ABN AMRO in the board. I started the so-called five unusual questions. These are the only questions I’ve given you before. I tested them with Dan and it was actually, you know, I enjoyed it a lot. So I kept doing it. And we’re still with those five questions, which I’d love to ask you now.
Vincent: And I very much enjoyed that specific podcast. So I listened to that also because Dan is a very dear friend of mine, and it’s always a pleasure to listen to him. So in a way, I got a little bit of a prep for these five questions.
Jeroen: That’s good. Well, there is a part in that where Dan talks about bananas, and a lot of people have asked him since about the banana. So if you haven’t listened to it, you know, make sure you hear about the bananas. Anyway, the first question in these five unusual questions is, do you have a somewhat unusual hobby or something special that you do in your free time?
Vincent: I had the benefit of prepping a little bit for this. And it’s not that I want to be special, but I also don’t want to give these obvious answers. But in a way, I have a special thing, but it’s not so unusual. But I really love sports, like really love sports. And maybe I took that a little bit to the next level. So I’m an avid runner or I became an avid runner. I love marathons. I love running. I love my daily run in the morning, which has really become a habit.
Jeroen: Daily?
Vincent: Daily, yeah.
Jeroen: It’s quite unusual.
Vincent: It is. It is unusual. Maybe I got a little bit too addicted to it. But it’s my way to get going in the day. So around seven-ish, I put my trainers on. I go for a run, never with music, sometimes with others. It’s actually a really good way to have a chat. But for me, that gets me into the day, gives me clarity of mind. I can sort of have a little bit of a look back on the day, but also look forward to what’s going to happen that specific day.
Jeroen: So is that a few kilometers or something, or?
Vincent: Well, it depends a bit. So sometimes I’m, often I’m a bit time-restricted. So this morning, I went for a 7K run, came back after, what, 35 minutes or so. Then I’m a planner. I’m a planner, so forgive me. I always make sure that when I’m home, at least I can spend a bit of time with my children and my wife before they go to school. So I have an early rise, but I also make sure that I’m there for breakfast. I think they prefer their social media over being with me at breakfast. But that’s sort of unusual. And on the weekend, I go for longer runs. I always try to do that with friends because it’s a really good way to spend time together and have a good chat, like a really good chat.
Jeroen: And this is all because you enjoy the run itself, but you said you also did marathons and stuff. Do you also then run for a certain time or is it still just to run. Is there competition involved or not?
Vincent: There is, there is, there is competition involved, but it’s a competition with myself, where I really want to raise the bar. I want to beat my best time. It’s something I like, but I also learned over time, I dislike it more and more because that’s not the purpose of doing that. Like preparing for a marathon is not just for the marathon. It’s just a journey to make sure you have brain capacity, you know, space to think. It’s a way to keep fit. It’s something to look forward to. So actually, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to do something else. I did a trail marathon in Noordwijk, which was not about time. Out of the 42 kilometers, half of it was on the beach, it was high tide. The other half was in the forest and on the dunes. So it’s not about the time. It’s pretty intense, but I really appreciated and enjoyed the experience, which I did with three other friends. It was great.
Jeroen: It was really good. Have you ever calculated how many kilometers you run on an annual basis? It must be quite a lot then.
Vincent: Yeah, well, it easily goes over 2000 kilometers.
Jeroen: You’ve run a lot of official marathons as well. Like for example, New York, London, or Rotterdam.
Vincent: All of them.
Jeroen: All of them. How many have you run then?
Vincent: Well, at least all of the ones you were referring to, but I’ve done over 15 now. I only started about 10 years ago, and I don’t want to do more than two a year because it’s not so healthy.
Jeroen: , so your buddy can actually take it, run so much, and then still also do those, , those marathons and then have this, you know, family life and then on top of a very busy job.
Vincent: Yeah. Or maybe it is actually the way to success or the way to stay healthy.
Jeroen: I should go back to my five unusuals, otherwise I will never make it. But this was just really interesting, because I’m, you know, I love running myself as well. So that’s great to hear. , second one, is there a famous person? So you’re not allowed to say my dad, mom, brother, sister, or whatever. Is there a famous person you admire or see as a great inspiration?
Vincent: Yeah. Well, here I go back to sports again, and it’s Roger Federer. Probably, you know, someone picked by many others, but from my perspective, for a couple of different reasons. I was an avid tennis player when I was young, actually from the age of 10 until 16 or 17. I played tennis every single day and also at a competitive level. I always knew I would never become a professional tennis player, but it was truly my passion. So it’s something I’ve continued to follow throughout the years. Roger Federer, apart from being incredibly talented and gifted, is such a pleasant person. How he looks at competition, for example, his competitors, they’re his friends. For him, it’s a source of inspiration. The guy’s incredibly eloquent. Have you ever seen him after a match, winning Wimbledon or, I can recall, like the Australian Open that he won, giving the speech, showing his emotions, actually becoming very emotional? And I like that. He’s also incredibly successful on the business front. He’s supported by a great team. He places a lot of trust and faith in his wife, an incredibly strong woman. So the way he approaches things, and I would recommend everyone to listen to a speech he gave at Dartmouth, one of these Ivy League schools in the U.S., where he got sort of a special lectureship. I think it’s called a commencement speech that he gave. It’s incredibly inspiring. And the guy is, as I said, eloquent and smart.
Jeroen: And you also have something, I mean, you probably have more income, but something that, you know, I think of is, he’s very disciplined as well. And apparently you are as well, right? You’re able to run every day. You said you’re structured, your day, or, you know, control how you organize things. So that’s something you have in common. It’s also something you kind of see in him and see in yourself.
Vincent: In no way do I want to compare myself with Roger Federer, because one of the other things I very much like in him is that he’s incredibly humble. So I think it would not be humble for me to look at myself as being like Roger Federer. But you’re right. I think part of being successful is also being disciplined and making certain things a habit. Really making certain things a habit, which often also makes it much easier to keep yourself honest when things become a habit. It’s so much embedded in your day-to-day, in your behavior.
Jeroen: Does that come naturally to you, or do you really decide this has to become a habit? So I’m trying to do it seven or 10 times, and then it’s habitized, as you say.
Vincent: Maybe a bit of both, but I think it’s probably also a little bit in my personality that I don’t know whether it’s disciplined, but I would say it’s more like I can be quite focused and determined on what I want to achieve, what I want to do, or who I want to be. So I think it’s coming from focus, and trust me, I’m not disciplined on everything, but if I find something important, I find it relatively easy to bring up the discipline and the focus.
Jeroen: Third , the so-called unusual question is, what has been the scariest moment in your life?
Vincent: There’s not a specific thing or situation. I’ve never been in a situation where I had to fear for my life, like in a car accident, almost in a plane crash, or ended up in a big fight. So, it’s not that I have a really scary moment. Obviously, sometimes you’re a bit tense or anxious. Your vulnerability is often with your children. That’s what I’ve learned as a parent, and probably most parents can relate to. That’s where your vulnerability lies. That’s probably also where I am, in a way, and I don’t want to be driven by fear — and I’m not. It’s also not how I’ve been raised. But if there’s something that could scare me, that could make me anxious or stressed, it’s often related to your children, because you really want them to be happy and healthy. So, when I think about fear, it’s not so much for myself; it’s more for the ones I truly love.
Jeroen: I actually expected you would talk about your health, and I’ll cut this out if you don’t want to discuss it. But you told me in a prep conversation that you had significant health issues relatively recently. But again, if you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to, but I kind of expected you would say, “This has been the scariest moment in my life.”
Vincent: Yeah. I’m okay to talk about it. Although when I was going through that, which is now almost two years ago, I was a little bit private about it. Not because I didn’t want to share that I experienced it, but because it was an incredibly intense period. It was intense for me, and it was intense for my family and the wider family. Not only my wife and children, but also my parents, my brother, my sister, and my inner circle of friends. It was incredibly impactful. I wanted to manage it a bit. It was indeed an intense period, but I’ve never been fearful. And maybe that’s also what surprised me — when you’re confronted with a severe situation, in this case, a severe health situation, you never know how you’ll react. But fear wasn’t something that came to my mind. What immediately came to my mind when I was diagnosed and knew what treatment I had to go through was discipline. But I’d say I was incredibly determined and focused. This is what I have to go through. These are the things that will probably help me, and these things won’t, so I won’t focus on them. Fear was clearly not there, but I’ve been blessed that it wasn’t. I can totally relate to people who would be incredibly fearful in such a situation, but I was lucky that it’s apparently not part of my DNA or personality to feel that way.
Jeroen: Yeah, and it sounds like it was also a way to cope with it — immediately starting to plan and make sure that the things you could impact, and there was obviously a big chunk you couldn’t impact, were managed as best as possible.
Vincent: Yeah.
Jeroen: I don’t know if that’s a correct summary.
Vincent: No, but it is, Jeroen. Well, you’re not only an interviewer, you’re also a psychologist, I found out, because the controlling element is indeed correct. So often with things that we cannot control, it can make us feel a little bit helpless or even fearful. And yes, what I could control, I wanted to control, but the controlling element really went to: how can I get prepared? How can I make sure that I’m engaged? But when you’re prepared and engaged, I think then you need to let go, and you need to let go to the experts, to the doctors, to the treatment who make sure that you also become healthy. So, that very much helped me throughout that whole process: the things that you can control, focus on them, and the things that are beyond your control, leave them to others.
Jeroen: Thanks for sharing. The fourth question is: suppose you receive 200 million euros today, and you must spend it within a few weeks or a month, what would you do with it? And preferably, indicate as specifically as possible how you would spend it.
Vincent: I’ve heard that question in previous sessions. I think there are a lot of good causes to spend that money on. My sort of intuitive feeling is that I would do something with education. I would also do something related to the world’s current dreadful situations.
Jeroen: Can you make that more specific?
Vincent: Yeah, let me make it more specific because what I would do, and this is also from personal experience, is that I feel incredibly strongly that everyone deserves a home. And what do I mean by that? I think we live in a society where we should not accept that there are homeless people. I’ve seen this in my very inner circle—someone who became homeless, often not driven so much by monetary issues, but often by psychiatric situations. I also have experience with specific organizations who really help homeless people: helping them afford a home, building the infrastructure, and providing support from all different angles. I do know that different municipalities in the Netherlands are trying to reduce homelessness because it’s a vicious cycle. From a financial perspective, it’s better to arrange housing because the societal impact is quite significant, but I would argue the impact on humanity is even bigger. So, I would spend that 200 million, within a month, on some of these organizations that I’ve seen doing incredibly good work. They need financial support to ensure that, starting with the Netherlands, there are no homeless people.
Jeroen: Great. I love it. Lastly, out of these five unusual questions, if you could reverse one decision from the past, what would it be?
Vincent: There are a lot of small decisions that I may have regretted. For a long time, I regretted going back from New York to Amsterdam until I met my wife, actually. And then I really felt like I was coming home. The cliché answer to this would be, or could be, that you often regret the things you have done, but often it is that you regret what you haven’t done. And sometimes, you don’t even know what you miss out on if you hadn’t embarked on a specific path. Some of the decisions I made, like going back from New York to Amsterdam, brought me so much good. I really loved life from a personal and professional perspective. I feel incredibly blessed by all the opportunities I’ve had through my employers. But also, some of the other decisive moments in my life, like my time in Groningen studying there or my time in Barcelona at IESE, have been formative for me as a person. They’ve given me so much joy in life. They also set me on a specific journey, which I probably would never have embarked on if I hadn’t taken that specific decision.
Jeroen: So, the short summary of this answer is that there’s nothing you would reverse if you had the opportunity?
Vincent: No, actually not.
Jeroen: It still helps to get a feel for who you are, so that’s good. We also always have a pleaser and a teaser, and I’ll start with that right away. On the teasing side, it usually relates more to business and financial services. We’ve written down that, even though the EU, specifically the EU and not Europe, has strong banks, it will never become as strong a financial center as, for example, London or New York. Do you agree with that?
Vincent: And then if you say the EU, you mean like the continent, like really the EU without the UK? Well, a lot of people thought after Brexit, well, this is the end of London. It clearly isn’t, it clearly isn’t. And some people actually argue that London is a bigger financial center than New York is. And in a way, you can make that argent, you can build that argent. So I am with you that I don’t see a real competitor coming from the continent towards London or New York. Although, if you look at who is sort of the winner from a continental perspective, it’s clearly Paris. I really had hoped that Amsterdam would, you know, be the winner.
Jeroen: Why is it not Amsterdam or Frankfurt?
Vincent: Yeah, you can have quite a lengthy debate on this. Actually, I’m part of the board of the Foreign Banking Association, and we’ve spent quite some time with policymakers and politicians in The Hague. I think where we’ve missed out a little as the Netherlands is that, historically, we have been seen as a country that provides goods and attracts head offices relocating from other parts of the world. But maybe we haven’t been as commercially driven in recent years. Perhaps we’ve lost some of the competitive edge we once had—whether in terms of the business climate, the fiscal and tax environment, or a combination of these factors. It’s also about being welcoming. After Brexit, and even more recently, we can see how other countries actively work to attract businesses, creating a unique selling point for specific sectors, industries, or companies. In contrast, I think the Netherlands has been a bit less ambitious and slightly less welcoming.
Jeroen: Does it have to do with the political leadership that is not specifically focused on this? Because when I lived in the UK, one of the things I experienced was that there’s a lot of players in the government working quite closely; and that can be good, but can be bad. It’s up to, up to you to, up to everyone to decide, but working quite closely together to actually attract business from other countries.
Vincent: Maybe we became a little bit complacent as the Netherlands losing out a little bit on the marketing that you need to do. , you also need to be appealing. You need to be attractive. You need to, , sometimes you also need to make tailor-made things. And I think the Netherlands, what we have done well, slightly wrongly, I would say, is we’ve also not been so consistent in our policies, changing that overnight or depending on the administration that was in power. And consistency is incredibly important. So coming back to your question, why not Frankfurt? Why not Amsterdam? I think Paris did a really good job. And, we have quite a big office in Paris. The commercial nucleus of the European franchise is in Paris. There’s a big talent pool. There are a lot of other banks there. I’ve seen Paris becoming more and more international over the years.
Jeroen: But it could ultimately compete with the size and the depth of the London market?
Vincent: That’s probably still a way to go, but France in itself, like it’s, I believe it’s the second-largest economy in Europe. Uh, it’s a big city. It’s a city that is pretty appealing to a lot of people. So from the continent, from the EU perspective, it’s clearly Paris, I would say, but there’s still some catching-up to do to be in the same league as London or New York.
Jeroen: You’re quite well positioned then, between London and continental Europe. It’s actually a great position to be in. And on the policing side, it’s always been the same question for 175 interviews or something along those lines, which is: do you have a particular book that has inspired you, or particular books? And also, do you like to read? That should probably be the first question.
Vincent: Yeah. Well, this is one of my other passions — I love to read. My father is a professor of literature, so there was no way we wouldn’t be reading. For me, particularly nonfiction, some novels, romans — as we say in Dutch — that’s something I love. I always try to follow what’s new, what’s good, what’s well-reviewed. I obviously get a lot of inspiration from my father, but also particularly from my sister. She’s still very involved in that. So for me, it’s really difficult to choose one specific book. But if I were to choose one, and I think it’s quite relevant these days, I read a couple of years ago a book called Apeirogon. It’s written by a ghostwriter, actually. It’s about a Palestinian man and an Israeli man, both of whom lost a daughter in the incidents that have been happening over the decades in Israel. They should have been enemies, but they became friends, actually best friends. It’s a story about empathy, compassion, healing, sorrow, and seeing each other’s perspective.
Jeroen: What was the title again?
Vincent: Apeirogon. It’s an incredibly difficult name. I had to look it up when I read it. Apeirogon. The “eirogon” part comes from geometry. It’s actually a shape with an infinite number of sides. I think that also captures it all. It shows that, in life, there are so many different perspectives, so many different sides. It’s so easy to put the world in black and white — you’re right, you’re wrong. But often, there is so much more to it. And I think these two gentlemen, you can also look them up on YouTube.
Jeroen: Do you think it’s real, and they’ve written it, or is it just because…?
Vincent: No, it’s real. It’s all real.
Jeroen: It’s all real. But you said it’s a ghostwriter.
Vincent: Yeah. So the ghostwriter wrote a book about it, and it’s a bit of a hybrid book in the sense that it’s not purely factual, and it’s not purely nonfiction. These two gentlemen, they’re real people. You can look them up on YouTube. They also give speeches together. They’re really good friends. And they’ve been dealing with, I’d say, the biggest pain a father can ever experience, which is losing one of their children. But for them, instead of ending up in a life full of revenge and hate, they turned it into something positive. And I think, especially in the times we’re living in today, this is incredibly important.
Jeroen: Absolutely. And yeah, it cannot be more relevant now than ever, right?
Vincent: It cannot be more relevant than now. I read this book when I was actually on holiday in Mallorca, I think it was four years ago. It was recommended by my sister, who is the best book recommendation I know. I found it incredibly insightful, but also very emotional at times. And as you say, Jeroen, it’s so relevant in these times to try to understand each other’s perspective.
Jeroen: That’s clearly been a theme during this conversation: instead of burning bridges between cultures, you try to find commonalities, right? That’s really an important part. It seems to be an important part of your life, even though we’ve just gotten to know each other now. Do you make sure to find this common ground?
Vincent: Yes. While it doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions or that I can’t be firm at times—and sometimes I do jump to conclusions—I think my default is really trying to understand someone else. What I like about this approach is that it also gives me new insights. I enjoy having a 360-degree view on things—on people, on situations, on businesses. I believe it gives me more insight and a competitive advantage compared to people who aren’t doing that. So, if you want to position yourself or your institution a little ahead of others, I think having that 360-degree view is actually quite powerful.
Jeroen: Before we wrap up, is there something you would say we should really have covered during this conversation that we haven’t so far?
Vincent: Well, I think we’ve covered a lot in an hour. I also liked having the opportunity to share something about my personal life. I hope I haven’t overshared—I don’t think I have. But I thank you very much for this interview. I enjoyed it, and I hope others will enjoy it as well.
Jeroen: I’m sure they will. I’m the first listener, after all, and I really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot for being vulnerable and showing the person behind the success. That’s one of the reasons we started this podcast: to show that C-level executives in financial services are just as normal as everyone else. So, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with Leaders in Finance, and to speak to me. We have a small present for you, which I’ll give to you afterward. For now, thank you so much for taking the time.
Vincent: Thank you, Jeroen.
Voice-over: It’s been a pleasure. You’ve been listening to Leaders in Finance. We hope you’ve enjoyed the episode and would love to hear from you. What’s on your mind? Who would you like to hear next? Tell us in an Apple or Google review, via email, or on our social media channels. We’d greatly appreciate it. Finally, we’d like to thank our partners for their ongoing support: Kayak, EY, Medirect, and Roland Berger. Thank you for listening.