Alexander Zwart has served as Chief Innovation & Technology Officer (CITO) at Rabobank for the past two years and is a member of the Managing Board. Before this, he co-led the large-scale transition to agile working, a transformation that now encompasses 15,000 employees. “Our entire IT landscape operates in an agile manner, including risk and finance models, infrastructure – everything.”
What is the biggest challenge your organization is currently facing?
“I see three major challenges.”
“First, the enormous opportunities offered by generative AI and analytics, and the next step, agentic AI, are particularly challenging. Scaling applications to deliver real effectiveness in a controllable and secure way is critical. This requires additional investment in identity & access management, improving the quality of your unstructured data, and embedding AI-driven decisions into the business process. Given our size – we have about 1,100 squads developing IT – rolling this out in a manageable and compliant way is far more complex in such a large organization than in a company with five IT teams.”
“The second task is related to this. We started our agile journey about seven years ago. We are now quite mature in this area. Our entire IT landscape, including risk and finance models, the infrastructure – everything operates in an agile way. However, this autonomy for DevOps teams means we now need to enforce standards and increase platform reuse across the bank. So we have launched a major initiative to improve the engineering journey – the software development lifecycle.”
“Banks develop a significant amount of software in-house. How can we ensure that the software development lifecycle is as frictionless as possible for engineers, while simultaneously scaling the adoption of managed standardized services (MSSs)? MSSs are services managed and developed by one DevOps team (the provider) for use by many other DevOps teams (the consumers). We aim to position MSSs as high as possible in the technology stack, so consumers are relieved of as many responsibilities as possible and can focus on delivering business value.”
“These MSSs must be compliant and secure by design. We have many DevOps teams that rely on IT services built by other DevOps teams. Consumers need confidence that a service they adopt meets all security and regulatory requirements imposed by the bank. Providers must deliver these services in a way that makes them easy to use for the consumers.”
“The third challenge relates to the rapidly evolving geopolitical and technological landscape. That is why we are reassessing our entire landing zone strategy. For the bank, this includes our own data centers and the landing zones we operate there, as well as those landing zones hosted by major cloud providers, such as Azure and AWS. We are reviewing our current footprint and ask: What should it look like in ten years? And what is the path to get there?”
The acceleration of technological and societal change does not make it any easier to plan a transformation. How do you keep up?
“The operating model we have implemented as a company, along with our agile working methods and supporting systems, helps enormously. In addition, we have a clear management agenda for our business unit, the ‘IT department’, so to speak. This agenda is closely aligned with the company’s priorities for customers, starting at the management board level. And the management agenda for IT is very clearly derived from that. In my team, the roles, tasks, and responsibilities are clearly defined.”
“Personally, what matters most to me is carving out time for deep work – thinking and working without distractions. I dedicate an hour to an hour and a half every morning to this. No meetings, no emails, just focused work on priorities I have chosen myself. And I try to read a lot, listen to podcasts, and engage with experts. Those are the things I do to keep myself sharp and moving forward.”
“We are reassessing our entire landing zone strategy: this includes our own data centers and the landing zones we operate there, as well as those landing zones hosted by major cloud providers”
“If you have a management agenda, at some point you switch into execution mode. But you also need to take the time to consider whether you are doing the right things. When I look at my inbox, my calendar, what I read about the world, and what I hear in the podcasts I listen to, if I were to start with a blank sheet of paper today, would I still pursue the current management agenda? Which processes are missing? Or which things would I prioritize less?”
“For example, if I notice that problems are coming my way that are not automatically solved by the team, then I have obviously not organized something properly. So I spend a lot of time thinking about how the part of the organization I lead can operate effectively with minimal intervention from me. I see that as my core responsibility.”
Would more intensive collaboration with peers help you cope with technological and societal developments?
“Definitely, and it’s something I already prioritize. I’ve been in this role for two years. During the first year, I said, ‘First, I’m going to make sure the internal organization is the way I want it to be.’ That includes everything I just mentioned; for example, there was no management agenda. In my second year, I also told my assistant that I wanted to be more externally active, which requires setting aside a lot more time for that.”
“When you look at global geopolitical developments and Europe’s position, Rabobank is a sizeable player. We invest heavily in IT and have a large workforce, but we can’t do it alone. That’s why I actively engage with peers. For example, I participate in the European Banking Federation’s consultative body, where IT directors from the largest European banks participate. I am also in close contact with CITOs from other major Dutch banks, because this [cybersecurity & resilience] is obviously not a competitive domain. We all share an interest in ensuring that the banks’ IT environments remain secure and reliable.”
“I have also reached out to my network of CIOs in the Netherlands to bring together all the stakeholders in critical infrastructure. We organized the first session at Rabobank, and the second time with “CIO Rijk,” Art de Blaauw. I actively try to initiate these kinds of initiatives, because many fundamental issues cannot be solved by a single IT organization.”
“And if we want to establish strong agreements with the major US tech players, we need to speak with one voice – first in the Netherlands, and ideally across Europe. If you want to tackle systemic issues, you also need cooperation with regulators and other banks. I consciously invest a lot of time in this.”
How would you characterize your leadership style?
“When things don’t go well, I don’t immediately assume that people have bad intentions or are unsuitable for their job. Instead, I consider whether we’ve thought carefully enough about creating the right conditions for success. How do we ensure colleagues are empowered and focused on the right priorities? That’s how I see my role. This doesn’t mean I avoid intervening with individuals when necessary. But my primary aim is to create an environment where engineering teams can do their work effectively and as autonomously as possible.”
“Working agile means a lot of autonomy for the DevOps teams. We now need to enforce standards and increase platform reuse across the bank”
“I don’t consider myself very pushy. If I have confidence in the plans and the person executing them, I’m comfortable letting go. When I see that he or she – half of my direct management team are women – is capable of handling something, I do not feel the need to ask for constant updates.”
“However, if I notice gaps in logic or structure and people don’t recognize or address them, then I can be on top of things. At those times, colleagues will perceive me as someone who interferes a lot. And if that happens repeatedly, intervention becomes necessary. That said, I don’t think people see me as an authoritarian leader who calls them to account every week. But when action is required, I take it.”
What are you proud of?
“My children are all 18 now. I think it’s wonderful to see who they have become. We recently celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, for which they had prepared a speech. I can be very proud of that. Or rather, happy about it.”
“But professionally speaking… a few things. A few years ago, I became responsible for our banking app when its ratings in the Android and iOS stores were at 2.0. Together with the team, we raised that to a solid 4.5. You can imagine that we were really proud of that.”
“I also had the opportunity to lead our agile program with a colleague for many years. We went from zero agile adoption to 15,000 people working in this way. Not just in IT, but across the business. I’m proud of that because it significantly improved our delivery reliability. We even got feedback on that from our regulator.”
“Finally, I am also proud of our approach to generative AI and the standardization of our platform across such a large number of teams. I believe we have struck the right balance: enabling a large number of teams to retain autonomy, while promoting reuse and standardization of services. I think that is going very well at the moment.”
Watch the CIO of The Year Special with Alexander Zwart: