Presenting the country’s best young bankers

At BNP Paribas Fortis, we are constantly thinking about the bank of tomorrow and the people who will work there. So we are keen to meet talented young people, and this prompted us to organise the Young Banker Challenge, the final of which took place on 28 September. The preliminary round took place in April and attracted 420 candidates. In Monday’s final, the remaining 40 contestants vied for tshe title.

They had to answer 20 probing questions prepared by a jury consisting of university lecturers and senior managers from BNP Paribas Fortis. Two winners were selected, one each in the “students” and “young professionals with less than 3 years of experience” categories. The winners were announced on 30 September in a virtual awards ceremony. This was an opportunity for them, and all the other finalists, to speak with several members of our Executive Committee, but also to find out more about our bank, the challenges we are facing and how we are addressing them.

What the winners said

Sebastiaan Jacobs was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was one of the two winners. A student at the University of Louvain, he is passionate about finance: “I think that disruptive technologies will completely reshape the world of finance, benefiting both customers and finance professionals. To be among the winners in the digital revolution, you need to stay at the leading edge of technological change.” His view is shared by Jordy Brylle Larsen, who won in the “Young Professionals” category: “That’s the only way that traditional institutions will be able to compete with fintech players.” He also emphasised the increasing importance of sustainability: “this is something the industry needs to continue focusing on. It’s something I believe strongly in, and I also see it as an opportunity for the industry to overcome the image problems from which it continues to suffer.”

“At BNP Paribas Fortis, we are determined to reinvent ourselves in order to be the bank of tomorrow,” said Sandra Wilikens, Chief Human Ressources Officer. “The talented young people we met through the Young Banker Challenge are, in one way or another, ideally placed to build that bank with us. They have a clear interest in finance, they love a challenge and they want to push boundaries. They also expect their future employer to be a positive force in society. And that’s exactly what we want to be. Like them, we firmly believe that our profession only has meaning if it contributes to a fairer and more sustainable society.”