I’m a microbiologist. And yes, I work at a bank.

From A to Z

“To put it very simply: I optimise customer journeys. In my case, the focus is on digital services for companies. Think of requesting a payment pass. Or opening an online account. Every customer experience is a journey and we always look for ways to make it run as smoothly as possible.”

“The beauty of my job is that you’re responsible for every step of a journey from A to Z. Everything begins with customer interviews. What keeps them busy every day? What obstacles are they encountering? Only then do we design, test and develop. And we involve the customer in each of these important phases. We are doing it for them after all.”

Brave but necessary change

“Large organisations often plan changes in the long term. ING was no exception. But when you do this, you sometimes miss the boat and the competition ends up a step ahead of you. Even tech-giants like Amazon are now fishing in our pond and they often act very quickly. This is why ING drastically chose a new way of working. Agile. To act more quickly. A brave but necessary decision.”

Yes, we take an agile approach and it’s fantastic. I would never want to work any other way.

Just like Sportify

“We work like they do at Spotify, in squads where every member has a different area of expertise. Customer journey experts, UX designers, developers, and so on. We set our goals autonomously and decide for ourselves how we will reach them. We take new steps in two-week sprints. And every day, we gauge the temperature in stand-up meetings. What’s going well? What isn’t? How do we feel about it?”

“Yes, we take an agile approach and it’s fantastic. I would never want to work any other way. But we are still a big bank, so there’s always a reason why you still need to depend on someone else. Legal checks, for example; it’s only logical. But the advantage is that here, you have the resources and the client base that you wouldn’t have, for example, as a start-up.”

You hold your career in your hands.

“At ING, you’re also challenged to formulate your personal ambitions. As such, I would like to become an innovation coach. I have the chance to work on that here, with all sorts of assistance such as training and education courses.”