You’ve worked over 25 years at Postfinance before you joined BEKB in 2020. What was your motivation for that move?
When I started at Postfinance in 1994, I couldn’t have imagined that I’d stay that long (laughs). But it turned out to be very interesting because I worked in positions linked to business development. In the last 3 years, I spearheaded Postfinance’s digitalization efforts, which included the digital banking offering, the establishment of digital end-to-end processes, and digital sales. During my time there, I was also on the jury of the young entrepreneur award startup.ch, that’s where my fascination with startups comes from. I wasn’t actively looking for a new position, but when BEKB offered me the opportunity to start completely anew with their innovation efforts, I wanted to grasp that opportunity.

What does a Head of Innovation do?
Our goal is to identify and establish new disruptive business models and trends. We’ve defined the scope of my responsibilities in close collaboration with the heads of the different business units. We’re also working on implementing an innovation process to enable our employees to generate as many new ideas as possible, with a design thinking approach.

Changing the way things are done in large organizations when things are going fairly well isn’t that easy. How do you deal with skeptical people?
By involving them. Also, there is no need to get buy-in from all our 1200 employees who have to get their daily business done. But those who embrace change and have the right mindset, I want to make them a part of innovation projects. BEKB has communicated its commitment to innovation publicly and has started a big open banking project. I report directly to the CEO and have a budget to make things happen. All this contributes to the great legitimacy of my role. Of course, I’ve just started and there is a lot to do.

In October 2020, BEKB announced that it will join Constructive Venture Fund and contribute 2 million francs to invest in startups, like the 3 founding members. What was the reason for that decision?
We don’t want to just foster innovation internally but also get new inspirations from outside the bank, and a cross-sectoral partnership like Constructive Venture Fund has its benefits. As a bank with a strong mortgage business, we’re interested in the startup ecosystem around the topic of living and want to participate in it. There are a lot of topics that interest us, be it the smart home or the internet of things and we expect to get a lot of new impulses from the Constructive Venture Fund network. It helps that we already have a common project with HBL, one of the partners, which is widely known as an innovative bank, and that we’re geographically close to GVB, another partner. Last but not least, an investment in startups is coupled to a return expectation. We’re too small as an organization to invest directly in startups, which is why Constructive Venture Fund is also a way of risk-sharing for us.

As a representative of BEKB, you’re a member of Constructive Venture Fund’s investment committee (IC). What does that role look like?
Investiere’s investment team screens the market for startups that correspond to our investment criteria and we have digital access to a long list of startups. The IC decides which startups merit a closer look, and then, the investment team writes short first reports on them. My focal point when I read them is what customer problem the startup solves. If the IC decides that such a case is really interesting, the investment team writes an in-depth report that easily runs into 60 pages or so. Reading the report and trying to understand the field the startup is active in requires considerable time. When the IC convenes, we have very interesting discussions, because each member has a different background. The variety of standpoints and questions is enriching, and I think this discussion and collaboration between representatives of several different companies is beneficial for all of us.