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Disruptive Technologies

Innovation Amid the New Normal

How BNP Paribas organizes to "disrupt or be disrupted"

Friday, April 26, 2019

By Jeffrey Kutler

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Innovation is a top priority throughout the financial services industry. At BNP Paribas it is pervasive, with a bank-wide “club” of chief innovation officers, hackathons and other organized programs, and efforts to pick up on “weak signals” that may point to significant future trends and opportunities, Danielle Winandy says.

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Winandy is responsible for risk management's part of the mission as head of the Paris-based bank's Risk Innovation Office in Brussels since 2017.

“Business as usual is over,” Winandy says in an interview, which followed a keynote session at the 20th GARP Convention in which she shared a stage with Vanessa Colella, chief innovation officer of Citigroup. “Change is the new normal. We have to accept that and to work with early adopters who are conscious of that and happy to do this kind of work and be the pioneers of tomorrow.”

Acceptance of the new normal goes along with an understanding of changes in the business environment and of the importance of collaboration and networking in pursuit of innovation. “We do a lot of co‐creation,” says Winandy, referring to interactions with, and openness to, people and ideas not just across BNP Paribas, but also other sectors and industries. “Diversity, for me, is the key to innovation.”

She believes that whether in automobiles, pharmaceuticals or finance, innovation can happen “anywhere . . . it's all the same methods.”

One of Winandy's examples is Innovation Factory, a security services initiative that involved “a seven-step process from inspiration to growth.” After a pilot in Paris, it was implemented in Europe and Asia and was “a big success.”

“We bring start‐ups to talk to us,” she says. “We created Risk Innovation Week” - 102 events in 12 countries, 3,563 people participating. “And in the middle of that we had a hackathon in four locations. The aim was: 'disrupt or be disrupted.'”

She adds that BNP Paribas is fortunate to have “risk managers who are willing to move and get risk to another level.”

Video production by DeLisa White

Related Articles:

U.S. and Canada Make Strides in Bloomberg 2019 Innovation Index
The History of Risk Management: 30 Centuries of Innovation




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