15 January 2021
'ABN AMRO's ambition is to work in a data-driven way. Even more than before, data is becoming the leading factor for improving business processes, increasing client satisfaction and reporting to stakeholders. Data gives direction and determines objectives. Data is key!
If you want to take that step, you need to be able to trust your data 100%. Having the right data, of impeccable quality, is a prerequisite for making the right decisions. And that is our team's responsibility. We ensure that the organisation gets a grip on its data. Our activities are aimed at constantly improving data quality and giving users information about the sources and how data flows through the organisation.'
Carsten Caelen is one of ABN AMRO's team leads for data management for the corporate market. He studied International Business in Maastricht and started his career in Frankfurt, the European birthplace of banking. Back in the Netherlands, he worked on the cutting edge of business and IT at Fortis, ending up at ABN AMRO. Data management is a relatively new field. There is a huge focus on the field of data science, but we are actually one step ahead of that: we provide a good, reliable basis.'
Project Manager
'Data is not an isolated thing. It is the result of input into a system by an employee (or by another system) in a specific process. This puts our team in a unique position as we have to deal with all of the bank's processes and systems. Take the client data system, for example. We expect the client to report any changes to their data to the bank. Clients do not always do this or do it too late, which makes the data unreliable. This affects Business, Compliance, Legal, Operational Risk and Finance. We sit down with all these parties to think about how this can be improved. In this case, the Chamber of Commerce (CoC) offered a solution. Companies are legally obliged to keep their information held by the CoC up to date. We have looked into making more active use of the information from the Chamber of Commerce by bringing in real-time data and building cross-checks that compare CoC data with the data in our own client records. Our role is therefore comparable to that of a project manager.'
Using data defensively and offensively
There are two sides to the use of data. The more defensive side is that we want to ensure that we report to regulators such as DNB, ECB and AFM based on the correct data. There is also more and more space for the offensive side of data use. At ABN AMRO, we want to use data to improve the client experience. Take marketing automation as an example. Instead of old-fashioned advertising campaigns, we want to be able to approach clients individually at times when it matters to them. It's about putting the right proposition for the right client at the right time. We have to be sure that the client's data is complete and in order.
Data management is therefore crucial and essential to the course ABN AMRO wants to take. If you want to contribute to this and you know how to bring parties together and make them enthusiastic, we would like to get in touch with you.
