There's no age limit for change!

I had the opportunity of speaking at the Paris Fintech Forum at the end of January. More than one hundred Fintech companies attended the event, making it a golden opportunity for dialogue between what we call “traditional” banks and new digital finance players. Ultimately, though, it was an opportunity to show there is not a great deal that separates us: with the emergence of digital technologies, and above all new client expectations, the “traditional” banks have undergone a significant transformation over the last four to five years.

Our capacity for innovation is present at all levels.

We are facing profound technological advances that change the relationships we have with our clients and push us to invent new services, all at the lowest possible cost. This can clearly be seen, and is particularly disruptive, in our relationships with private individual customers. Whether in our branches or via social media, we are adapting to their ability to be in relation with us how and when they please, and to ensure that we can offer them real-time, personalised services that combine both in-person and digital points of contact. As a technology company, we do a lot of the work ourselves in developing the services that our clients want. Numerous applications have been developed by our internal talent, 50% of our IT projects are developed using agile methods and 80% of our development technologies are open-source. The portion of our IT budget dedicated to new business models, new applications and experimentation is growing constantly. Our capacity for innovation is present at all levels.

Open cooperation is the approach we are taking. We are testing many things, without restrictions.

Without a doubt, there are technologies that Fintechs can offer us more quickly, and so help us save time. Open cooperation is the approach we are taking. This is an important change for the Bank, and there is more than one way we go about it. We are testing many things, without restrictions. There is no miracle answer! For instance, Boursorama took the decision to acquire Fiducéo, which meant we could share this account aggregation technology with our other retail banking entities. In Africa, we decided instead to invest in the capital of the Fintech TagPay to develop alternative banking solutions. We also invest in funds to screen start-ups and develop technologies quicker. In return, we offer all of these finance start-up partners our expertise in regulatory requirements, distribution, security and large-scale processing.

Fintechs challenge us and stimulate our agility, and so much for the better!

As such, it is indispensable for us to collaborate more with innovative communities to better understand the start-up ecosystem. With them, we are immersed in this world, we experiment, and we test out new forms of cooperation. This openness is vital! It drives us to be more agile, quicker, more flexible, and to experiment rapidly. Just as Fintechs do! Ultimately, they challenge us and stimulate our agility, and so much for the better! It’s fine by us!

Moving into the era of digital agility is a challenge as major as it is exciting.

Be inspired by their agility, this was the conclusion I shared with Mark Mullen, Chairman and CEO of Atom Bank - a young mobile bank set up in the UK in 2014 – and with whom I had the opportunity of speaking onstage at the Paris Fintech Forum. We noticed how many views we shared, in particular the conviction that, regardless of the banking relationship model we are developing, we must be capable of moving quickly and significantly in test and learn mode. This of course is in the very DNA of a young digital bank. For a company like Societe Generale, which has been around for more than 150 years, moving into the era of digital agility is a challenge as major as it is exciting. And, personally, I am convinced there is no age limit for change...!

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