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00:00:00
00:00:01
Cedric Puel
54 Plays3 months ago
We talk about working in retail banking before INSEAD and working in retail banking after INSEAD. We also talk about the matchmaking skills of one of our batch mates.
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Transcript
Cedric's Journey in Retail Banking
00:00:01
Joe Waltman
All right, today we've got Cedric Puel. Cedric, thank you for joining. me
00:00:05
Cedric
Thank you for inviting me.
00:00:07
Joe Waltman
i Standard question, refresh our memory. What were you doing before in CIAD and what have you been up to for the last 21 years?
00:00:16
Cedric
I was doing exactly the same thing before and after. So I worked, and I've always worked almost always in retail banking.
Educational Path and Career Shift
00:00:24
Cedric
I used to work for Capital One at the time. I went back to Capital One and then I continued in consulting and bank paper labor later.
00:00:32
Joe Waltman
Well, let's let's let's go in let's go into a little more detail. so So what exactly were you doing before in Seattle? You said you were at Capital One prior to? Okay.
00:00:41
Cedric
Overall, I spent my yeah whole ah career in in retail banking. I started at Capital One in the US, out of university ah in Chicago, um first in marketing um and then in ah business planning.
00:00:54
Joe Waltman
but let let's let's dig it Let's dig into that in a minute. so so you you ah I didn't realize you went to college in the United States. You know you you you strike me as a quite a a french French person. what was sort of the the the what What got you to the US? Do you have some roots there?
00:01:12
Cedric
No, I'm actually half French, half Lebanese, but I'm very very French inside, I would say. um So now I went to the US as part of my school program. I went to engineering school in Paris, um and part of the program could be done at Northwestern, close to Chicago.
00:01:32
Cedric
It was at the time only a very few people could do it, and I had the opportunity to do so, so I went and I
From Paris to INSEAD and Back
00:01:39
Cedric
loved it. It was the first big change in my life, going to Chicago and studying in the U.S. and then naturally working in the U.S.
00:01:49
Joe Waltman
Gotcha, so you got the job ah With with with Capital One and you were you were in Virginia or you in New York Yeah,
00:01:54
Cedric
yes um For Capital One, I was in Virginia. in Richmond, Virginia.
00:02:01
Joe Waltman
yeah, yes
00:02:02
Cedric
So the the first big move for me was from Paris to Chicago. This was a big change. But the second one from Chicago to Richmond was the biggest move by far.
00:02:14
Joe Waltman
yeah Yeah, not many people, actually my wife grew up in Richmond, so I know it quite well.
00:02:14
Cedric
Big change.
00:02:18
Joe Waltman
ah it is It's a different place.
00:02:19
Cedric
Yes. Yes. The funny thing is that at the time, Capital One, I was dating, joining Capital One, um and they told me, know you know what, we've talked enough about business.
00:02:29
Cedric
Just come to Richmond. You will love it. I went to Richmond. I hated it, but the employees there, ah two of them took care of me for, I don't know, two or three days and I love them.
00:02:42
Cedric
So I went for them, but I didn't come for the city. Definitely.
00:02:45
Joe Waltman
That's cool.
00:02:46
Cedric
Yeah.
00:02:46
Joe Waltman
That's cool. so you And you were in Richmond working for Capital One the whole time before in Seattle?
00:02:51
Cedric
No, I spent two years in Richmond. And then Capital One opened the Paris office. And so naturally, I was part of it. ah There were very few French people at the time at Capital One. um There were probably ah between 20 of us out of, I don't know, 20,000 old engineers. And so ah they counted on us to open the French office. And so we did. And it lasted in Paris um about five or six years.
00:03:20
Joe Waltman
So what year would this have been that you moved from Richmond back to Paris?
Returning to Capital One and Transition to Consulting
00:03:23
Cedric
I moved to richmond back from Richmond back to Paris, and that is where I decided to take a year off, a little bit more than a year, to go to INSEAD.
00:03:32
Joe Waltman
I see, I see. But how long were you in Paris before INSEAD started?
00:03:37
Cedric
ah Two years, I think.
00:03:38
Joe Waltman
Two years, okay, okay.
00:03:39
Cedric
Yes, two years exactly two years.
00:03:41
Joe Waltman
And the the reason for INSEAD was just to to take a break or were you thinking of switching careers?
00:03:47
Cedric
No, for me, INSEAD was just ah a part of a natural path. um Three of my yeah four cousins on the Lebanese side went to INSEAD. And for me, it was the only MBA I could do. I wouldn't go back to the US. And INSEAD was already a very good school. So for me, I was either getting accepted at INSEAD or not doing an MBA.
00:04:13
Joe Waltman
yeah yeah i and and The plan was always to go back to the the retail banking or were you actually flirting around with other things?
00:04:22
Cedric
so No, I love retail banking. And I still love it after 25 years. um I still love it. you know it's ah It's a mix of finance and retail distribution for people, small businesses. It includes sometimes private banking. So you have a huge array of business cases and um With that, I had a huge array of different positions. So I love it. But I didn't say what I wanted to do is to go either to consulting or um or ah investment banking to change a little bit. And so the consulting offers I had were ah not good. They were not in the top three yeah consultancies. And at the time, so that was summer twenty um
00:05:13
Cedric
2003, there was a financial crisis, so there was no ah no jobs in investment making. So I went back to Capital One.
Building a Data-Driven Approach at BNP Paribas
00:05:21
Cedric
um When I went back, they were about to withdraw from continental Europe. And so I did the closing. I spent, actually, a year and a half working on the closing, selling portfolios in France and then in Spain and Italy.
00:05:37
Cedric
um So it was interesting, but it was the end of the story. So I finished the story of Capital One with the end of Capital One in Europe. But that was um that was a nice time. And then I went to consulting, specialized in retail banking.
00:05:55
Joe Waltman
Sorry, you you you you so you were capital one for a year or two after in CIAD, helping them to shut down Europe.
00:06:00
Cedric
Yes. ah
00:06:02
Joe Waltman
and And then where did you go after that?
00:06:04
Cedric
Yes, for a year and a half after inside. And so then I went to consulting for a for ah for quite some time, three and a half years, and then I went to Bend the Bible.
00:06:09
Joe Waltman
Oh, I see. Sorry.
00:06:19
Joe Waltman
I assume you were consulting two retail banks but based on the...
00:06:21
Cedric
I was consulting to retail banks exactly.
00:06:23
Joe Waltman
ah
00:06:23
Cedric
I worked a lot for ah the French government which gave me the opportunity to meet all the banks and while doing so um I was kind of, as we said earlier, lazily looking for a job.
00:06:37
Cedric
ah in ah in a retail bank and I had to had the the opportunity to mix the inside network and the people who were talking from the banks to the government um as a big network and kind of chose what I wanted to do. It allowed me actually to choose the the the best bank, at at least the biggest bank at the time, Ben-Peparibar. So in Paris that was the reference and I wanted you to join them better than another one.
00:07:07
Joe Waltman
Yeah. Yeah. in In France, that is the, uh, the a hundred pound gorilla, right? So but let's talk a little bit about what, about your journey within BNP. What, what, what kind of roles have you had and and how, how was your trajectory going?
00:07:21
Cedric
I didn't pay, I started like a capital one in marketing. And then I realized that a lot of the business decisions that were taken at the bank were not efficient enough because they did not rely enough on data so for data. And I was appending the asset to the director General saying, you're asking me for decisions, but you don't have the data to take the decisions and so on and so on for a few months. And after a few months, he told me, and why don't you start a data team? and so You have your own data.
00:07:53
Cedric
And so I did it. And i so I worked in data analytics and artificial intelligence for ah almost 10 years. been the pipe um I started the first team that mixed performance analytics, statistics, modeling, and artificial intelligence.
00:08:01
Joe Waltman
And there was not there was not a data team before. you You started the first data team at this company.
00:08:15
Joe Waltman
What year would this have been?
00:08:17
Cedric
That was in 2010, nearly 11.
00:08:20
Joe Waltman
Oh, wow.
00:08:21
Cedric
yeah And so we worked for the first time mixing all this data. So we didn't call it ah big data. Remember that? We called it bigger data, just to say that we get we were getting data that was bigger every day. um With that, we were able to ah take decisions with a finance perspective and a customer perspective perspective perspective at the same time with the same data. And that was the first time in the advent paper that we could do it.
00:08:50
Cedric
That was a trademark of Capital One, but in continental Europe, honestly, no one was doing it.
00:08:58
Joe Waltman
yeah
00:08:58
Cedric
So we were the first one to to do so.
00:09:01
Joe Waltman
yeah Capital one probably was probably one of the more more advanced banks worldwide with with that kind of stuff, right?
00:09:05
Cedric
Yes, yes. so We don't turn out. One of the guys I worked ah for at Capital One, I'm still working with him now at Ben Peperiber. I recruited him 12 years ago and we're still working together after 12 years.
00:09:19
Joe Waltman
So is it safe to assume you've been doing this data stuff ever since then at BNP or have you bounced around?
Current Role and Responsibilities
00:09:26
Cedric
I'm sorry, I didn't get that.
00:09:27
Joe Waltman
Have you been been you know building out this data team ever since at BNP? Are you still working in that or have you have you bounced around within the company?
00:09:34
Cedric
No, I changed three years ago and um I came back to distribution. So now I'm handling, um so ah distribution for continental Europe that includes the branch networks, the call centers, all the tools that they use, um the marketing and um the marketing campaigns, the digital ah campaigns, and the digital applications.
00:09:57
Joe Waltman
Oh, well.
00:09:57
Cedric
And in addition to that, something that is very peculiar to Ben Pepper, it's what we call cross-business. Each time you have an entity A selling a product to the customer of an entity B, that's called cross-business.
00:10:10
Cedric
You have legal and financial implications to that, and somebody manages that as well.
00:10:16
Joe Waltman
So the the business banking stuff would presumably be that, or or you or use this like selling to another bank.
00:10:22
Cedric
It's still retail banking, but that's when you when you sell an insurance to a retail bank customer, when you rent a car to a retail bank customer, that's cross-business.
00:10:28
Joe Waltman
Okay.
00:10:32
Joe Waltman
I see. I see. Okay. This sounds like a like ah big team. but you So all these people working at these branches are are at some level under your ah organization.
00:10:41
Cedric
Now I have a transversal impact on them. I'm transversally responsible for um what we call ah performance improvement.
00:10:45
Joe Waltman
okay
00:10:51
Cedric
or transformation and performance improvement. So actually my bonus is linked to the improvement in a ah revenues, costs, um employee and customer satisfaction.
00:11:02
Joe Waltman
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
00:11:04
Cedric
And that includes, so that's France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy and Poland.
00:11:12
Joe Waltman
Is under your purview.
Challenges in Retail Banking
00:11:14
Cedric
Yes.
00:11:15
Joe Waltman
Hmm. Well, um, well, tell us a little bit about kind of what, what, what is on the horizon for, for consumer banking in, in, in Europe and maybe worldwide.
00:11:26
Joe Waltman
I mean, there, there, are there are some disruptive forces at play right now. Right.
00:11:31
Cedric
Yes, retail banking has become, first it has become more more costly, a lot more since the financial crisis, somewhere between 2008 and 2011, the end of the euro crisis. The regulators have been nervous about banking as a whole and so they requested a lot more ah compliance and risk ah work on our side. So that's a lot more expensive to do so.
00:11:57
Cedric
Then in addition to that, now you can bank on your mobile phone quite easily. You take a picture of yourself, you send a an ID and you can start banking with a ah bank that is somewhere in Eastern Europe and operating right here in France.
00:12:10
Joe Waltman
I know.
00:12:12
Cedric
um And so there's a lot of competition and rising, I would say, production costs. So it's a big challenge. um So the margins have been ah very, very small. And with those margins, we need to give an Amazon-like experience to customers. And that's quite difficult. So on the horizon for customers, I think a lot more simplicity in all kinds of financial aspects, including the complex ones like mortgage or investments.
00:12:44
Cedric
um For the bankers, a lot less margins, much more difficult ah job, and therefore I get some consolidation. I don't see Europe going with 5 to 10 players in each country. and That's not possible. There are not enough margins.
00:13:05
Joe Waltman
Yeah, so clearly that the neobanks are are very disruptive. are Are people at your bank even worried about this crypto stuff, disrupting finance?
00:13:15
Cedric
So well.
00:13:16
Joe Waltman
No, no, that's fine. It's a nice ringtone. I was saying, are the people, you know your colleagues at all worried about this crypto stuff, you know disrupting a bank like BNP?
00:13:30
Cedric
We're worried about the neobanks. We're not necessarily worried about cryptocurrencies or crypto assets. Cryptocurrencies and crypto assets, we can choose to manage them, um even though we need to understand them and make sure they are compliant, which is less easy than a more transparent product. The neobanks um they They are worrying, yes. They are worrying and they get the same thing, the same kind of financing that um internet companies got 25 years ago. You know, lots of funds funding them um with no real return on investment. So they are creating great products, killing the margins, killing the prices and we suffer from that.
00:14:13
Cedric
So that's worrying us. At the same time, we are inspired by them. So they do things ah quite quickly, things that we would like to do as well. So then we need we we need or we just need to copy to copy them. um um This source of inspiration ah ah is at the same time a threat and an opportunity for ah for us. We're not creative enough to do what they do.
00:14:41
Joe Waltman
Yeah.
00:14:41
Cedric
So if we observe well and we replicate well, then we're I think we're okay.
The Importance of Personal Connections
00:14:48
Joe Waltman
For sure. um Well, thank you very much. It's it's kind of refreshing to hear ah stories from from people who didn't necessarily bounce around between industries and and you know from from from startups to big companies and back and forth, you know some some continuity. I ask a last question of everybody.
00:15:08
Joe Waltman
Um, and if you don't, if you don't have anything to say, just say, you know, I don't, but is there anything that either we as, as the NCI people could do to help you or vice versa, you could do for, for people in, you know, in, in our, in our promotion.
00:15:24
Cedric
I don't know, I think for the whole community, um
00:15:30
Cedric
we We kind of lose lose contact with each other after some time. um And I think the community has been less alive since the internet has taken over in our exchanges. We now exchange on WhatsApp groups. um We have LinkedIn to get in touch and to find people that we have ah not seen for a long time. And therefore, um um the contact that we used to have in the association, ah which was physical, um which created a lot of um links with people from inside and with people from not inside, this has disappeared. This has weakened a lot. So the one thing I would ah and we push people to do is to meet in person more often.
00:16:24
Cedric
not just you know once every 10 years, and maybe you have less and less people coming every 10 years, um because without that, we kind of lose the link between each other.
A Personal Story: Meeting His Wife
00:16:37
Cedric
I met my wife thanks to Insead, and so I had three kids, so to speak, thanks to Insead.
00:16:41
Joe Waltman
Oh, tell that story. so let's Let's hear about that.
00:16:45
Cedric
Well, after, ah right after inside, actually, 2003, end of 2003, Diane Gickmanas was organizing a party. Jean Froix Lapoine came with his best friend. And his best friend, a few years later, became my my wife. And so she's the mother of my three kids. So to some extent, kind of directly, I owe my job and my kids and my family to INSEAD.
00:17:15
Cedric
Without that, I've had a different job, very different job, and a different wife and different kids, and since I'm very happy with my job and my family life then...
00:17:15
Joe Waltman
Amazing.
00:17:18
Joe Waltman
That's fantastic.
00:17:27
Cedric
I will thank INSEAD and say, you know what, INSEAD is not, or the INSEAD network is not something that you can only leave from far away and through networks, through digital networks. You also need to leave it as people and meet those people.
00:17:45
Joe Waltman
That's fantastic. And and maybe Jeff Washington look into doing a, uh, like a matchmaking service on the side, just introducing his, uh, is his female.
00:17:50
Cedric
Yes, probably yes.
00:17:51
Joe Waltman
Yeah. yeah Hey, uh, that that's, that's a good way to to end this. Thanks so much for, uh, for your time. Great, great to catch up.
00:17:57
Cedric
Thank you. Bye-bye.
00:17:59
Joe Waltman
Ciao. Bye.