Category: Management

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Economical policy Management

Are we unhappy at work or has work lost its value?

An increasing number of news stories are focusing on young people who have decided to stop working and simply scrape by, saying that minimum social security benefits are enough for them. As if it were normal to count on those who work to choose not to work. This signals a shift in how young adults think about work.

People point to sociological surveys to show that French companies are home to a quasi-pathological malaise at work, which would explain the refusal of the majority to postpone the retirement age.

Something appears to have broken between French people and their work, the latter having become a source of dissatisfaction and even psychological and physical disorders.

The urgency, then, is to address this distinctively French phenomenon of unhappiness at work, stemming from the poor organisation of companies and the insufficiently regulated “exploitation” of employees.

Naturally, job satisfaction depends on the particular situation of each company, and even more specifically on the company department and line managers. But numerous French companies are working to improve their management, identify what good management entails, and develop best practices.

What if the problem is not about this widespread sense of unhappiness at work? What if this new and oft-repeated discourse hides something else? A number of surveys and polls show that many employees trust their company and have struck a good work-life balance. More than a sense of malaise at work, perhaps the problem is about the erosion of the value of work itself? And this goes beyond the crucial improvements to be made regarding arduous or highly repetitive work and, notably in public hospitals and schools, cases of growing pauperisation and a lack of recognition of the importance of the work of these professionals.

Is it not the case in France over the last 40 years that the switch to a 35-hour week, the introduction of a fifth week of paid holidays and the decrease of the retirement age to 60, regardless of the obvious individual benefits and the justice of such measures, have undermined the essential value of work, both individually and collectively? Or do some people now see work as pointless, or perhaps as a necessary evil, but one that needs to be reduced to a minimum?

Our welfare society – an invaluable collective asset that needs to be safeguarded – has been considerably corrupted by requiring too few obligations for ever extended benefits.

During the Popular Front, for example, the unemployed were required to accomplish tasks of general interest in exchange for subsidies.

And financially, as well as for the social contract to remain widely acceptable, we are no longer in a position to grant more and more benefits; instead we are obliged to roll out revolutionary reforms, as in the Nordic countries since the early 1990s and in Germany since the early 2000s. This shift consists in putting a stop to the unquestioned provision of aid by introducing clear requirements and conditions for benefits, the aim being to save the country from economic and financial collapse and to preserve the social pact allowing a high level of social protection, as the Nordic countries did in the 1990s.

Our society as a majority is not suffering from a widespread malaise at work caused by businesses themselves; it is prey to a growing disaffection for work combined with the rise of unbridled individualism adroitly dressed in discourses of solidarity, alternative approaches to labour, and even the rejection of capitalism. Benevolence – a fine and increasingly advocated value – can be conceived only if accompanied by a parallel and equally strong sense of requirement. Failing this, under the pretext of understanding and explaining everything, benevolence allows anything and everything. This could destroy the relationships between benefits and obligations that form the basis of the social contract and harmonious co-existence. What we need, then, is benevolence with requirements, healthy demands on oneself and others, in families, work and school. This sense of requirement is free of any connotation of intransigence.

Constantly supported and protected while giving nothing in exchange, too many people have lost sight of the relationship between, on one hand, the right to income, health and a pension and, on the other, work.

If the value of work is not restored as soon as possible, a major economic, financial and social crisis may occur. We need to understand that the only source of wealth is work. And that the high standard of living and social protection enjoyed in France relative to other countries can only be defended in the short to medium term by the work of the French themselves.

Work is a source of liberation and socialisation rather than alienation. Socialisation, social ties, and the act of forging one’s place in the world all constitute a key social need and are most often made possible by work. Work enables shared projects to be achieved. It gives meaning. It organises social life. Companies and company departments need to constantly strive towards the best way of working and empowering individuals in their work and that of their teams, without idealising reality but also without systematically blackening it ideologically. We must not forget that work serves to collectively safeguard – and to improve – the standard of living and social protection of the entire population.

Categories
Bank Event Management

Farewell message to BRED Group employees

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, I will be relinquishing my functions at BRED on 31 May.

We have been working together for ten years now. And how much progress we have made! We have written some wonderful chapters in BRED’s story.

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Ten years of success. We have posted historic results every year since 2012, continuously growing our NBI and net income. These results are not the fruit of chance; they are the result of the ongoing and renewed commitment of each and every one of you in implementing a strategy that has enabled us, year after year, to adapt to economic and social transformations, so that BRED always comes out on top. We addressed the challenge of the ramp-up of digital, not only through significant investments in tools to enable us to match the performance of our “pure player” competitors, but above all via the human aspect. We have invested in professional training, stepped up equal opportunities, and freed up our advisors by digitalising repetitive tasks in favour of a trustworthy and quality expert business relationship designed for the long-term. 

I am extremely happy that our BRED has forged ahead with this new model, a model of banking without distance and a promise to our customers of a global close relationship that abolishes both physical and behavioural distances by combining the best of the human and the digital. Firmly focused on the future, this loyalty to the fundamentals of the banking business has underpinned our success. The results speak for themselves: Ten years of growth, with an 81% increase in our NBI and a 2.7x increase in our shareholders’ equity; ten years of performance, with a 2.8x increase in our net income; and ten years of continuous improvement in our efficiency, with a 13.1- point decrease in our cost/income ratio to reach an outstanding level of 54%. These results are not a self-congratulatory obsession – they are the real-lie illustration of how BRED, across its various businesses, has met the expectations of the market and successfully gained the loyalty of its customers. Our results have also been marked by the confidence granted to us by our members, the number of which has risen 47% in ten years. Bravo to us and to you. On the back of these results, profit sharing and incentives have also increased spectacularly, by a factor of 2.3 since 2012.

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Yet the climate has not always been favourable to us – far from it. In a low interest-rate environment for banks, we succeeded in outperforming. And how could I not mention the unprecedented situation we experienced during the pandemic? Amid a threefold, health, economic and financial crisis, our results testified to our resilience and the relevance of our trajectory, as well as our ability to succeed in the challenges having faced commercial banks for many years now.

This period considerably accelerated the major changes under way and required companies to reorganise quickly. It encouraged BRED to go even further in banking without distance and switch to 100% advisory banking. The solidity of our bank also enabled us to support the economic recovery of our country, and this is something we can be proud of.

The relevance of our strategy also extends far beyond our borders. In the last ten years we have pursued our international expansion and created new banks in dynamic countries, with the unwavering determination to provide expertise and added value commensurate with the highest international standards. We are now established and growing strongly in Cambodia, Laos, Fiji Islands, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu; we are the number-one bank in Djibouti. Our international trade financing business launched six years ago in Switzerland and more recently in Dubai has proved an enormous success. These achievements can be seen directly in our performance, with international business contributing 16% of our NBI in 2022. 

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More than results, I have experienced a magnificent human adventure by your sides. From my time at BRED I will always remember our incredible collective power during tough times, as well as more joyous times that we shared at regional conferences and across the entire BRED Group. A particularly special memory for me was our 100th anniversary celebration at the Grand Palais, an exceptional event in all senses of the word, and one that I will never forget.

I am thankful to have worked with motivated, passionate and committed teams and to have been part of absolutely remarkable achievements across the division in France, including in mainland France, Guadeloupe, Saint-Martin-Saint-Barthélemy, Martinique, French Guiana, Reunion and Mayotte. All our business lines have put in strong performances: our branches and business centres, and our Private Bank, rated as the best private bank in France in 2022. Our Corporate Banking Division has taken on true stature and succeeded on the strength of its know-how and technical expertise. Our trading desk was recognised in late 2022 as the best European bank for placing the short-term debt of major European issuers. Last but not least, our international banking business, which has undergone tremendous structuring and development. Our BRED has also been acknowledged for its CSR performance, gaining an extremely high-level Sustainability Rating (A1) from Moody’s.

Our Promepar, Cofilease, Prepar-Vie Assurance, Sofider, Adaxtra, Ingepar and Vialink subsidiaries continue to step up their development and the distribution of their wide-ranging offers. They have now been brought together at a new building in La Défense.

Bravo to all ! Ten years of success in which we have enabled BRED to always come out stronger while many groups have aimed to get by through substantial cost-cutting.

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As I say my goodbyes, I would also like to remind you that our banking profession is passionate, and even essential to the economy, regions, and people themselves.

I have made economics my life, because I see it as the queen of the human sciences. Economics tries to explain how people organise themselves to live, to form a society and seek to improve their lot. And from my passion for economics has come my passion for banks, the place where we can best observe and act on the economy.

A bank is above all a business, with a strategy, resources, objectives and a corporate purpose. To my mind, running a business is first and foremost a responsibility towards its constituent teams. Over these ten years, my unfailing question has been to ascertain whether everything has been done for BRED to move in the right direction, to be profitable on a lasting basis to protect jobs, so that working here is both an individual and collective achievement, and so that we take pleasure in our work and are proud of belonging to the bank. I have always endeavoured to be fair and ensure that everyone else is, because a fair business is a guarantee of job satisfaction and success. It is a business that provides equal opportunities – the same opportunities for everyone, regardless of their, gender religion, skin colour, social origin or educational background. And as I have said on numerous occasions, for me it is a question of combining efficiency and ethics, both with regard to employees and to customers and society. Both are necessary. Efficiency without ethics does not work for long, while ethics without efficiency cannot exist because there are no means to make it work.

I hope with all my heart that you share the idea that our work as bankers has meaning, that what we do is useful, because as commercial banks we are absolutely indispensable to the economy and to the individuals, thus to society as a whole. What a marvellous job we have! We support and facilitate the life and business projects of our customers, over the long term. We are a relational bank, an advisory bank, in the long term, with trust. 

We are also the parties that match financing capacities with financing needs. To do so, we take on the credit, interest-rate and liquidity risks instead of leaving them to be borne by households and businesses who are unwilling or unable to take them. And at BRED, a cooperative regional bank, we are crucial to the regions in which we operate, both in France and internationally, as we are tied to them through convergent interests. There is a true osmosis between our territories and ourselves. If the territory is doing well, the bank is doing well. And if the bank is doing well, the development of the territory will go well. So the concept of CSR is even more real and concrete. Our bank is truly committed to each of these territories. First and foremost by doing our job well, which is essential. And through our investment in favour of equal opportunities, as well as culture, which are powerful drivers of social cohesion and, hence, well-being. In a highly globalised world, we have seen the emergence in recent years of an even stronger need for closeness, a need to which I feel that we respond.

For all these reasons, commercial banks, and BRED, are essential. And rest assured: we have a wonderful future ahead. Because our mutual and cooperative model enables a fruitful alliance of efficiency and ethics, I am convinced that we will be around for a long time to come. We prove this every day and in the long term, even though people have for years been announcing that traditional banks will give way to new competitors. But this position is often based on a false understanding of the essence itself of banking, the forecast demise of which is overly hasty. At BRED, despite the health, financial and economic crises, despite the emergence of low-cost online banks, despite cryptocurrencies, despite excessively low interest rates for an excessively long time and despite all the obstacles in our path, we have not reduced our workforce. On the contrary. Neither have we closed branches – again, on the contrary. Our results have not slipped; they have nearly tripled in ten years. We have come out strong because we are committed together with efficiency and conviction in a strategy that has succeeded and continues to deliver. And to remain strong, to continue to make headway, we need to make the necessary changes while safeguarding the essence itself of our banking profession. We need to maintain our momentum, our talent for overcoming obstacles, our fighting spirit and the pride we have in our profession, and in our bank. This is absolutely essential.

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We have experienced ten years of collective success. I am certain that you will continue to successfully write the story of our wonderful company, that you will stay your course through a rational management approach underpinned by the strengths and values of the BRED Group, namely value-added advice, close relationships with our customers, a proactive approach and entrepreneurial spirit.

And I am certain that you will find the same values with my successor, Jean-Paul Julia, recruited in 2015 to head Corporate Banking, and who then went on to become Chief Executive Officer of Banque Populaire Bourgogne Franche-Comté. Jean-Paul has extensive knowledge of BRED and its business lines.

In the coming years, I wish you as much pleasure and at least as much success as we had together.

Thank you all. Thank you for your determination, your talent and your sense of individual and collective success. Thank you to Stève Gentili and Isabelle Gratiant, and the entire Board, for having enabled me to bring together everything I admire in banking: retail banking, private banking, corporate and investment banking, capital markets banking, and international banking. And thank you for having unwaveringly supported the integrity of our bank, while ensuring benevolent and exacting supervision. You have made my adventure at BRED the most wonderful experience. We can be extremely proud of what we have achieved together.

Long live BRED. And long live you!

Categories
Bank Management

BRED 2022 activity report

It has a very special meaning to me because it marks the end of 10 years of commitment to BRED.

Year after year, despite an adverse environment for commercial banks, the BRED group has significantly increased its net banking income and the results of all its activities.

In retail banking, BRED has further developed its local relationships by reorganizing and modernizing its branches and deploying the most effective digital tools to improve proactivity, responsiveness and convenience.

At the same time, it has further improved its advisory capacity by investing heavily in training and skills. Today, it is a 100% advisory bank, providing advice and support for the life and business projects, large and small, of each of its clients. A bank that is loyal to its clients and useful to the economy of its territories, in France, East Africa, South East Asia and the Pacific.

A bank supported by 6,300 employees, in France and outside France (one third of them), in retail banking, corporate banking, trading room, trade finance, etc., who work daily to provide the best quality of service and advice to their clients.


I would like to thank them for their invaluable contribution to BRED’s transformation over the past ten years!

Categories
Global economy Management

Entrepreneurs (and entrepreneurship) play a vital dual role

First, economically. For many, growth is a matter of innovation and creation. This is notably what breaks rents, allows for technological revolutions, productivity growth, thus growth in non-inflationary wages, etc.

Growth momentum comes from the economy’s capacity for movement, to experience changes in consumption standards, such as production standards, etc.

Moreover, entrepreneurs are the ones who take the risks of innovation, novelty and bold calculations. Entrepreneurs can take action within companies, provided they give them the opportunity and space to do so. They can also be company founders. Over the long term, the economy experiences the emergence and disappearance of firms. These two moments coexist and are necessary for each other. Some sectors are expanding while others are evaporating. And this is one of the drivers of the economy’s growth and its ability to adapt. This is the creation/destruction mechanism so well analysed by Joseph Schumpeter, then brilliantly reinterpreted by Philippe Aghion.

Secondly, but not less importantly, entrepreneurs are also essential because they contribute to equal opportunities. Rents hinder the latter. The ability to innovate, produce something new, can allow categories of people with lower levels of insertion or less established within the existing system to emerge and create wealth for society and for themselves. Entrepreneurship thus makes it possible to disrupt the established order, when the rules of the game in force make the current situations more rigid. Of course, for this to work, the “institutions” have to allow it and promote it. This applies to competition law, education, methods of financing innovation such as the start-up ecosystem or start-ups, etc. as well as the culture of each company that promotes and values, or not, successes or failures…

The entrepreneur, whether a founder or developer of a business, must be one of the leading figures of our societies in order to promote both economic growth and equal opportunities. Two pillars that strengthen one another and which form the basis of the social pact.

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Management

Management and change management: 8 keys to success

No method can guarantee a business’s success. There is no doubt that some mechanisms lead straight to failure. However, some ideas, based on experience and reflection, may be useful.

1. Be constantly attentive to changes in the environment and the conditions in which you work

It is vital to continually ensure that the model you have conceptually developed remains relevant. You have to think about your model, of course, but you also have to regularly check that you are always thinking correctly, by maintaining methodological doubt, and never getting bogged down in certainties.

At the same time, you must draw on firm convictions by analysing what is invariable in your job. Why this job is useful to people, as well as to the economy. Finding and understanding these invariants enables us to adapt to changes without constantly changing the whole business model. You must therefore have the ability to question your understanding of the environment in which you work.

Thus, having a clear understanding of the essence of your business and at the same time perceiving the changes in the way you do business is key to achieving your goal, ensuring a smooth transformation and not a brutal disruption.

For this approach, it is essential to combine analytical intelligence and intuitive intelligence, i.e. sensitivity to people and things. It is the condition for better understanding and anticipating. Anticipating means thinking about how employees, competitors and customers change the environment in which we operate, and also about the reactions they will show to the changes we think we should make. Anticipating correctly enables you to act correctly.

2. Consistency of choice

You must be completely consistent in the strategy pursued. Otherwise, meaning is lost. You can’t go anywhere with an inconsistent course, pointing in divergent directions.

But there is more. A poorly chosen strategy will inevitably lead to failure. But proposing a relevant strategy is by no means enough to lead to success. Consistency is a prerequisite for success. It is the alignment of strategy, the means to achieve it and the incentive systems. When the means implemented are used for a relevant strategy and the incentive system ensures that each person or team is inclined to direct their actions towards implementing the proposed strategy, then a kind of magic happens. Success is often achieved. This consistency of choice, experienced in each team, is thus fundamental.

3. Adequate change engineering

But this consistency, while necessary, is not sufficient. You also need adequate support, management and change engineering. And intuitive intelligence is essential here, as it enables you to detect obstacles to change and think about them in advance, thanks to feedback from the teams. And to overcome the difficulties thus encountered without losing direction. A clear, explained, but also shared strategy is one that is not only driven from the top, but is also the result of ongoing dialogue between managers and employees. And special attention to the reactions of both customers and competitors. This process is demanding but necessary and fruitful.

4. A process of trial and error

This logically leads to a well-conducted process of trial and error. Change must have a defined course, but it must be a well thought-out but flexible process. When developing a strategy, you know broadly where you want to go, but as the change unfolds, you discover the reactions of teams and customers. You therefore need to think about the tree of possibilities as far in advance as possible and not to plan the change rigidly and stick to it no matter what. Highly flexible and dynamic planning, incorporating the actual situation encountered, in a back and forth between the conceptualisation of the process followed and the reality that emerges as this process is rolled out, makes it much easier for you to reach your objective.

5. True kindness and the importance of trust

Kindness is a positive value, running counter to the prevailing cynicism. It is not the mark of a lack of intelligence or insight. It does not imply naivety. True kindness is a benevolent demand. It is neither softness nor laxity. It does not mean intransigence either. Demanding means first of all being demanding of yourself, and then obviously of your teams in order to take them as high as possible, to ensure that they succeed and are therefore happy with what they do. Kindness is also about trusting people a priori. Trust given in this way often attracts the trust of others in themselves as well as in the person who first gave it. If it is misplaced, it must be withdrawn; a priori trust is not blind trust.

Shared trust is a key element in the smooth functioning of the whole and in job satisfaction.

6. Setting the pace and developing the pleasure of working

Let’s not let boredom set in at work! Boredom, anxiety and inconstancy are often part of human nature, as Blaise Pascal once said. They reinforce each other. Work is such a big part of our lives that it is essential to seek pleasure in work, both for ourselves and for those around us. Setting the pace is to set the tempo, in the musical sense of the word. It means having projects all the time and completing them, and not feeling the time pass. It means communicating the desire and pleasure to do things and to do them well.

Moreover, work contributes to the socialisation of the individual and to their emancipation. It liberates. Working means participating in and contributing to the success of a team or a project. In this way, it helps give meaning to our lives.

Life is change, constant evolution. So is work. Life doesn’t stop, and neither do our projects. It is these projects that give rhythm to our work and our lives, and give dynamism to a company. The rhythm of life is an antidote to boredom. But we must never mistake a sense of rhythm with the confusion of overwork.

7. Ensuring equal opportunities and the marriage of efficiency and ethics

A fair business is a successful business. It is a company that provides equal opportunities, that provides the same opportunities for everyone, regardless of their religion, skin colour, social origin or educational background. Equal opportunities and talent are crucial. Even if avoiding all injustices is very difficult, we must constantly strive to do so.

More generally, it is obviously a question of combining efficiency and ethics, both with regard to employees and to customers and society. Both are necessary: efficiency without ethics does not work for long; ethics without efficiency cannot exist because there are no means to make it work.

8. Fair managers

in the age of the networked company, with the collaborative intranet and freely circulating information, managers should not be petty bosses sitting in their hierarchical role, standing behind their employees and keeping score. They must be in front of their teams to pull them up, motivate them, give them meaning, rhythm, desire, the joy of succeeding, the pleasure of achieving together. Help them overcome the difficulties they encounter, help them progress professionally in order to promote their autonomy and their capacity for initiative. With some supervision, of course, but in order to better move forward and progress.

These few ideas are far from exhaustive. They are not recipes, but rather a methodology, a business philosophy. A company that is good to work for and of which you can be proud, a company where work means something.

Categories
Bank Management

BRED Group 2022 Annual Results

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