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E07 - Yvonne Bakkum, Independent Advisor and Board Member
36 Plays4 days ago
What does it take to mobilize institutional capital for real impact, creating bridges between developed and emerging markets? In this episode, Krisztina Tora sits down with Yvonne Bakkum an impact leader focused on boosting the positive impact of capital. Amongst other roles, she was the founding Managing Director of FMO Investment Management where she mobilized private capital at scale for the SDGs. In the conversation, Yvonne shares how she helped shape the Dutch impact ecosystem, from pioneering work with pension funds to making development finance more accessible, impactful and accountable. We explore why financial institutions matter in emerging markets, how risk and reward can be redefined for social good, and what’s still holding us back. Yvonne also reflects on building an impact firm from the ground up, alongside deep personal reflections on resilience and leadership. If you care about making finance more human, and doing it at scale, this episode offers both insight and encouragement.
Please review the episode, share your feedback and subscribe to the podcast!
You can also:
- Visit our website: womenchangingfinance.org
- Follow Yvonne on LinkedIn
To go further here are some of the references mentioned during the episode:
- Netherlands Advisory Board (NAB) on Impact Investment https://www.nabimpactinvesting.nl/
- Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) https://www.unpri.org/
- Achmea Investment Management https://www.achmeainvestmentmanagement.nl/english
- FMO https://www.fmo.nl/
- FMO Investment Management https://www.fmo-im.nl/en/
- Sustainable Finance Lab https://sustainablefinancelab.nl/en/
- Sustainable Pension Investments Lab (SPIL) https://spilplatform.com/
- ABN AMRO Bank https://www.abnamro.com/en/home
- Triodos Bank https://www.triodos.com/en/about-us
- Triple Jump https://triplejump.eu/
Read Yvonne's bio: Yvonne is an independent advisor, interim manager and board member focused on boosting the positive impact of capital. Currently she is advising Achmea Investment Management on the acceleration of their impact investing proposition. She was founding MD of FMO Investment Management BV, mobilizing private capital at scale for the SDGs. Yvonne worked at FMO for 22 years in total and held various other positions including Director Private Equity, Manager Credit Analysis and Manager Business Development. Earlier she worked at ABN AMRO. She holds a master’s degree in business economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam. Since 2022 Yvonne chairs the Netherlands Advisory Board on impact investing. She is a member of the Supervisory Board of Incofin Investment Management and holds several other supervisory/advisory positions. In 2022 and 2023 she was listed in the Netherlands top 50 ‘Women in Sustainable Finance’.
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Transcript
Introduction to Women Changing Finance
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi, welcome to the podcast Women Changing Finance, where you will discover amazing women from all around the world who are making finance become a force for good.
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast Women Changing Finance.
Meet Yvonne Bakoum: Impact Investing Advisor
00:00:24
Speaker
I'm Krisztina Tora and I'm welcoming today Yvonne Bakkum. She's an independent advisor, interim manager, and board member focused on boosting the positive impact of capital.
00:00:35
Speaker
Currently, she's advising Achmea Investment Management, on the acceleration of their impact investing proposition. And she worked for 22 years at FMO, the Dutch Development Finance Institution, where she was the founding managing director of FMO Investment Management.
00:00:52
Speaker
I met Yvonne a few years ago, before she joined the board of the Dutch National Advisory Board and became the chair. And if I recall correctly, Yvonne, it was at the GIIN Conference in Paris a while back.
00:01:03
Speaker
I have always been very inspired by Yvonne's authenticity as a leader, her insightfulness and her expertise, alongside her ability to make development finance accessible to all.
00:01:16
Speaker
We share a passion for impact and I'm therefore really delighted to have you, Yvonne, on the show today.
Impact Investing Trends in the Netherlands
00:01:21
Speaker
So before we go further, i would love to get you to speak a little bit about the impact ecosystem in the Netherlands, where you're based.
00:01:30
Speaker
It would be really nice to get a picture of the trends in your ecosystem, what's specific about impact in the Netherlands, what are the activities, who are the players, and to what extent are you seeing progress happening.
00:01:46
Speaker
Well, great. And first of all, thanks, Krisztina, for inviting me to this podcast. I think indeed we must have known each other since 2019. two thousand and nineteen I must say it seems much longer and well, happy to have this conversation.
00:02:00
Speaker
Dutch impact investing ecosystem is very active and a lot is going on, has been going on for years. As you probably know, the Dutch institutional investors were among the first ones to promote and adopt sustainable investing, founding signatories of the UNPRI.
00:02:22
Speaker
And that led to a lot of awareness on environmental and social issues in institutional investing. Also, the Dutch ecosystem has many players with a long history in impact investing, impact fund managers, impact asset managers, the likes of Triodos, ASN, TripleJump, and of course, FMO, where I used to work.
00:02:45
Speaker
And what is really great to see is that today, these worlds are coming closer to each other. It started with a lot of events, I think, and that brought people in contact, exploring, a bit circling around each other, what can we do together?
Dutch Pension Funds and Sustainable Finance
00:03:03
Speaker
and so I think we are still a bit in that phase, but really in the more concrete phase of that stage where the institutional investors have really taken some next steps, ah not only exploring impact investing, but really investing or preparing to really invest and to allocate a quite meaningful amounts for making an impact. And to me, that's very encouraging.
00:03:28
Speaker
And in my various roles, I try to contribute as much as I can. Thanks, Yvonne. That's great intro to the ecosystem in the Netherlands. Can we perhaps just zoom in to some of the the players?
00:03:41
Speaker
You have a very vibrant, I would say, social entrepreneurship ecosystem. You also have, in my understanding, something that is relatively unique. is a big pension industry and some of those pension funds are the pioneers in in the impact space.
00:03:59
Speaker
Can you tell perhaps a little bit about both of those or or maybe even some other players that you are seeing coming to the impact space? Yes, the impact space is really wide. Indeed, as you say, we also have quite an active social enterprise sector.
00:04:16
Speaker
We have academics who focus on impact. We have the Sustainable Finance Lab, the Sustainable Pensions Investment Lab. Our Dutch Central Bank has been very active in promoting green finance, sustainable finance.
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah, and the institutional investors, of course, who have this enormous amount of capital to invest. and increasingly realized, stimulated by their participants, the people who will benefit from the pensions, increasingly they are aware that with this huge capital comes also a huge responsibility to use it wisely and to go further than mitigating negative impacts.
00:04:57
Speaker
That's the stage where we are now. So that there's quite some common ground in where people want to contribute and what they want to achieve. And, well, the challenge now is to find each other and make sure that there's also a match between what certain parties can offer and what other parties expect.
Challenges in Impact Investing
00:05:17
Speaker
There is yeah size, institutional quality, geography, asset classes.
00:05:24
Speaker
It's quite a puzzle that has to be... yeah that people are working on. But there are already some great examples of investments made, And there's a lot of attention these days, for instance, on also impact in the Netherlands.
00:05:39
Speaker
Of course, my background is in impact in emerging markets, but I very much recognize ah the need also to solve societal issues in the Netherlands. like We have a huge shortage of affordable housing.
00:05:52
Speaker
There are issues with ah the healthcare system. Of course, we have also an aging population. People need to have decent jobs. ah housing in combination with decent care,
00:06:04
Speaker
And all that, of course, the climate transition and the energy transition requires a lot of capital investment. Agribusiness, well, the Dutch have been always leading in the agri sector.
00:06:17
Speaker
It's a very large, also extremely efficient sector. But, well, the impact it has, the negative impact it has on nature is also a challenge.
00:06:27
Speaker
I think impact investing can really contribute to a lot of those issues. if Parties can find each other. And then I also mean public sector and private sector.
00:06:39
Speaker
The Dutch government has always been looking to cooperate with investors. It hasn't materialized in a lot of cooperation. Sometimes, yes, but it remains a bit anecdotal and much smaller than you would expect given the size of the Dutch pension sector.
00:06:58
Speaker
And there, I think we have great opportunities to do more. Thank you. And perhaps before I ask you more questions on your career and your journey, you are the chair of the Dutch National Advisory Board, like I mentioned, and the objective, right, is to develop the ecosystem.
00:07:17
Speaker
So can you tell us more about what are you seeing as the most important thing opportunities or perhaps barriers to be addressed to go further and to develop the ecosystem in in the Netherlands?
00:07:30
Speaker
Yes, when we started the NAB, we did a ah study to map the sector, basically to so to make clear what impact investing in the Netherlands looks like, who are the players and indeed what are the barriers, but more importantly, what are the solutions, the potential solutions.
00:07:48
Speaker
And well, I hope I still remember it, the really the structured way of summarizing it. But the barriers were in different fields. So there are barriers in culture.
00:07:59
Speaker
So institutional investment is say highly regulated and highly structured business. with ah very technical asset allocation models and a very cautious, conservative risk culture.
00:08:18
Speaker
That is a barrier when you talk about innovation, when you talk about new forms of financing. Strangely, also there's a bit of short-termism in the sector, and especially around making valuations at any given time.
00:08:34
Speaker
I can explain that also later if you want. That private markets, so private equity, private debt has more impact potential than listed asset classes.
00:08:46
Speaker
But the illiquidity of these instruments is a challenge for the systems and the models that investors work with. So risk culture, short-termism, that's one group of barriers.
00:09:01
Speaker
Another group of barriers is the mismatch between supply and demand. The example that speaks, I think, most is the size mismatch.
00:09:12
Speaker
Institutional investors have huge portfolios to allocate the traditional impact sector has relatively small funds. And to bring those together is a challenge.
00:09:24
Speaker
And there's also a third group of challenges and that's impact transparency, the lack of really harmonized standards. So it's when one party talks about impact and the other party talks about impacts, they can in fact be speaking about quite different things.
00:09:42
Speaker
In the past, I used to be a bit irritated when people spoke about definitions and that was a barrier. But I came to recognize that indeed it leads to a lot of uncertainty and everybody is concerned about their
Adaptation and Overcoming Barriers
00:09:57
Speaker
reputation. And if you are investing in something, believing it's genuine impact investing, and later on it turns out that it has a lot of negative impacts, for instance, then your reputation is at stake. And that's something people are very scared about.
00:10:13
Speaker
So those are just a few of the barriers But I think most barriers, in fact, can be overcome if you really want to overcome them. For instance, asset allocation models, risk appetite.
00:10:28
Speaker
As an investor, you are in a position to change that. and to make room for impact and for adding new considerations into your investment decisions.
00:10:41
Speaker
At the other side, also people need to make changes. I recall when we started with FMO Investment Management, this was a new business for us. And even before we set up ah the business,
00:10:54
Speaker
dedicated team and FMO investment management entity. We were already talking to large pension funds and we did that next to our day jobs. I was then director of private equity, but I clearly remember how much energy it brought to the team.
00:11:12
Speaker
to know that they would have to live up to the quality standards of these potential investors because it felt like playing in a different league. And yeah, I found that a very positive factor.
00:11:27
Speaker
And when we put out some vacancies to bring people to the team, I remember that we had a sentence saying like, the quality expectations of our potential investors should be seen as an opportunity and not as a burden.
00:11:42
Speaker
And that's a mindset also. So people can change and it's great to see that happen. And that's probably a wonderful transition to asking you to tell us more about your career, your journey, what were maybe the milestones in your journey?
Yvonne's Career Journey and Motivations
00:12:01
Speaker
Maybe you had some pivotal moments or some important moments in your journey. Yeah, it would be really great to hear what the things that you did build this new entity and also maybe what happened subsequently.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah. Well, first of all, I've never been a great career planner. I studied economics basically because I thought, well, that's very broad. I can do many different things with it. Not very much a strong motivation to become an economist.
00:12:34
Speaker
But after that, of course, looking for a job. Well, I think what's always driving me is content. an intellectual challenge, doing work that is not too simple, and also working together with people who have a similar drive and motivation to make a difference somewhere.
00:12:56
Speaker
But I cannot claim that I wanted to be an impact maker from the first day of my career. Definitely not. I just wanted to do exciting work, ah nice people, nice places.
00:13:08
Speaker
So I joined ABN Amro Bank, their investment banking division. And I worked there in but mostly project finance, structured finance, corporate finance.
00:13:19
Speaker
And the most exciting part of my 10 years there was when I joined the team, which was called Corporate Finance Central and Eastern Europe. And that was in the late 90s or the mid 90s, actually.
00:13:33
Speaker
Well, early 90s. I'm getting old. Yeah. ah And it was a very dynamic time for the countries in Central and Eastern Europe because it was just after the Berlin Wall had fallen and there was a lot of privatization going on, a lot of new enterprise. And we worked there trying to do nice deals.
00:13:53
Speaker
I remember traveling to Slovakia doing, well, city heating systems with a Danish sponsor. It was all very... Very entrepreneurial and very much startup.
00:14:06
Speaker
And the people that we were dealing with were also very young because the post-communist era, they needed people who were not too much used to the old system where there wasn't enough people.
00:14:19
Speaker
entrepreneurial spirit. So the young people got a lot of room and I really enjoyed that. So because I had enjoyed working in emerging markets so much, I wanted to do more of that. But in ABN AMRO at the time, there was a big emphasis on shareholder value.
00:14:36
Speaker
And that was taken very literally a very short term. So it was about the share price of ABN AMRO. That was in the whole of the building, fixed screens with the share price. And there was an objective to make that go up. And I found that very one-dimensional and it' it really led to changes in the business and emerging markets became less and less relevant. And I felt I had at that time had a very exciting sidestep in my career being the business manager of the division
00:15:11
Speaker
working very closely with the executive committee, sitting in on many strategic discussions and doing some research to support those discussions. So that was great. And that had nothing to do with but impact, but it was just exciting for me personally.
00:15:29
Speaker
And afterwards, I, well, I shouldn't say I fell into a ah big ah black hole, but it was a bit difficult to find something that was motivating.
00:15:40
Speaker
And i I became what they called a senior banker for ah telecom, media and technology. My boss was sitting in London. ah Virtual working and and connectivity was not as easy as it is today. So it was really distant to have a boss in London and a bit of a team that was spread out across the world. And I didn't really feel like we were working together.
00:16:03
Speaker
And I was driving. I remember one day I was driving to one of the customers in the Netherlands of it and I thought i don't want to do this i don't want to be just in the Netherlands and trying to bring all sorts of products to these clients.
00:16:18
Speaker
It was very sales oriented and I didn't really feel that it was my ideal role. And then I applied with FMO to join their, initially their Asia team.
00:16:31
Speaker
And during the job interviews, a former colleague of mine, Joost Seidberg, who is now ah the yeah head of Cardano Development, he said, well, I know you're applying, but why would you join the Asia department?
00:16:44
Speaker
The real exciting stuff is happening in my department, which is the Africa department. Okay, well, that sounds good. Let's join the Africa team. So I signed a contract for the Africa team and my colleagues at ABNM in my farewell party gave me books about Africa. And that so good. And then I went on.
00:17:03
Speaker
holiday to have bit of relaxation in between jobs. And when I came back, the secretary of the chief investment officer was on my answering machine.
00:17:14
Speaker
And she said, can you please come for and for can you come to the office because we have a question. And I went to the office and the CIO said, yeah, yeah, it's great. You will join us. But really, we need you in the Latin America team.
00:17:29
Speaker
So before even having started, i had been ah potential member of three different teams. And I thought, well, he explained why it was so urgent and what the opportunity was in Latin America.
00:17:42
Speaker
and it happened to be the case that I had done some studying in Spanish and I had to Traveled to Latin America after my studies and taken Spanish classes in Guatemala.
00:17:55
Speaker
So I thought, okay, well, I could manage doing business in Latin America. And that's what I
Building FMO Investment Management
00:18:01
Speaker
did. And I had great time. Afterwards, became ah manager of the credit analysts.
00:18:07
Speaker
So much broader view. Then director of private equity. globally really exciting times with also and that was a bit of similarity with the central and eastern europe experience because there are all the people we dealt with were also really young and eager and intelligent i also like that and in that period we came in touch with dutch pension funds and we decided that if we wanted to make serious efforts to mobilize their capital to be invested for impact alongside FMO, that we need to have a separate dedicated business.
00:18:45
Speaker
And that was the start of FMO Investment Management that I had the honor to set up from scratch, which was a really great experience athlete for eleven years and years until last October.
00:18:57
Speaker
And in that period, I realized that, as I said before, I wasn't driven by impact initially. But of course, I became driven by impact because I saw what the difference our investments were making on the ground in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia.
00:19:15
Speaker
So FMO Investment Management from day one was really built as an impact investing firm and that's as a means to mobilize private capital for impact.
00:19:27
Speaker
Wow. So many you know different experiences and perhaps double-clicking on the this last experience at FMO Investment Management. For people who may not be very familiar with the development finance world, can you explain what was your role? What you know what does day-to-day look like when you're running ah an organization like that? What What kinds of investments are you making? how are you making decisions?
00:19:53
Speaker
What are the kind of activities that you have as a leader of an organization like FMO Investment Management? Yeah, the role changed a lot over for time because initially it was a pure startup.
00:20:06
Speaker
And we started just the two of us, Nic Wesemius and myself. We had a little corner in a room somewhere ah surrounded by other teams and and they asked, what are you going to do? it's It wasn't very clear. It wasn't very visible to many people.
00:20:24
Speaker
So we really had to build the organization, build the visibility internally, but of course, especially externally because we We needed to fundraise, we needed to find partners, set up those partnerships. And we started in October, just the two of us, we recruited ah two more team members or three more team members.
00:20:47
Speaker
Well, by the time it was, I think, April, We had the initial team complete with six people, actually four of them still in FMO Investment Management today.
00:20:57
Speaker
So that's really great. It's also very much appreciated by our investors because of the continuity it brings. But it also shows how motivated and my colleagues were because from day one, they really carried the journey. It was really joint effort, really teamwork.
00:21:18
Speaker
And gradually, we built more structure. And the role division of people became more clear. In the early days, we were doing a lot of things together. And then my role was very much to inspire, put the dot on the horizon, what are we working towards, and also trying to set some milestones.
00:21:38
Speaker
I must say, project management is something you need to do in many roles. It's not my natural strength. I'm a bit chaotic because I tend to be, well, as I said, content driven, and I'm always interested to deepen my knowledge and and involvement in many different areas. So I really admire people who are very structured and can bring processes along. And so luckily, we also had some people like that in the team. So together, we really managed to And my role over the years became... Well, it had always been externally focused, but it became more and more externally focused because we really had to build our brand.
00:22:19
Speaker
I was speaking at a lot of conferences. where Well, you mentioned we met in Paris at the gym. That was one of those events and really to build the FMO investment management brand on the basis of the FMO brand, of course, and of FMO's activities that I had always been very proud of. So that was a very nice role to be able to go out and talk about all these good things and and then translating our capabilities and FMO's capabilities to the needs of investors. So bringing together what we could offer and what the market demand was and setting up the partnerships to actually implement funds.
00:23:01
Speaker
So with ah commercial asset managers, Partnerships were yeah the key to our success because in the early days, of course, we had a lot of knowledge about making investments, but not about setting up funds, doing fund administration, reporting. So our partners helped us a lot in that respect.
00:23:22
Speaker
And governance became more and more important element of my role to make sure that we were in control, but also to engage with our shareholder, the board of FMO. And we had set up an advisory committee with some external people to make sure we had sufficient outside-in perspectives, all of that.
00:23:44
Speaker
And well, that's a well fascinating journey. Can you reflect on the mirror with the general development finance world? So I think that this example and what you created at FMO with this very specific organization within FMO to really deal with attracting private capital to be able to invest more into emerging markets is something that is being talked about a lot.
00:24:11
Speaker
Perhaps you can reflect on that as well. How have you seen the development finance sector evolve in your journey? And what are you seeing today? Maybe what are the opportunities or what are the things that you need to kind of push forward?
00:24:24
Speaker
Yeah, well, a lot of great work is being done ah by the various development finance institutions and multilateral development banks. Over the years, I've really met some great people, very knowledgeable, very experienced working on the ground, knowing really the issues of investing in emerging markets.
00:24:43
Speaker
I think all that expertise and these skills are underutilized. because they're mostly in most institutions still being utilized to build up their own balance sheets and not benefiting from the opportunity to bring institutional capital, private capital along.
00:25:04
Speaker
And yeah, that has, well, you you've studied that yourself as well, Krisztina, that has a lot of causes that we may deliberate on later.
Mobilizing Private Capital through DFIs
00:25:13
Speaker
But I find that this really a pity because underutilizing people's talents is always a bit frustrating when I see that happening.
00:25:22
Speaker
And, you know, many development finance institutions have been over the years contacting me, contacting us to ask about our experiences. We shared experiences with many And I think some of them, I know some of them have also set up some funds, mostly remaining quite small.
00:25:42
Speaker
So I think the ambition level of private capital mobilization by the DFIs should really be much higher. And that requires a different mandate also, because it's likely to affect profitability because ah margins in asset management are very thin.
00:26:01
Speaker
It's not a business that will generate very high profitability. Although i'm I'm convinced you can build such a business, we did it as a profitable business, but it's a moderate profitability.
00:26:14
Speaker
And of course, you shouldn't offer those things below cost. But the good thing about the DFIs is that they have the synergies of, yeah, investing for their own balance sheets and then bringing others along, you can do it on a bit of a marginal cost base to some extent. I mean, I know these are quite complicated considerations, but I think there that more could be done.
00:26:38
Speaker
So let's double click on that. What more can be done? what are the From your point of view, what are the two or three things that we should focus on to maybe change the system and and improve it?
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah. Well, as I said, the mandates should be changed to a more originate to share mandates. The challenge is that there's a bit of a misconception also in the market that that the the institutional investors and the private capital providers would be interested only in the very best part of the DFI loans and and private equity investment. And with best, I then mean in financial return terms and risk terms mostly. So the lowest risk.
00:27:23
Speaker
That is seen to be the most attractive. But in reality, when you are able to ah attract private capital for diverse portfolios, that's quite a broad range of risks that could be in there.
00:27:38
Speaker
And the funds advised on or managed by FMO Investment Management have a quite a broad spectrum in terms of countries and sectors.
00:27:48
Speaker
largely overlapping with the own balance sheets of the DFI. So there's more potential to mobilize private capital for a broader part of the portfolio than what is generally believed in the market, I think.
00:28:04
Speaker
That's a very important point. And you've been, you and also the Dutch National Advisory Board, among the ones kind of trying to push this idea more out there and debunk the idea that it it's only only a certain kind of assets that are investable.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah, and you should actually turn it around. There is, of course, a certain slice of the activities that is not investable for more commercially oriented investors.
00:28:32
Speaker
which is very logical because that's why exist. And that part of the business, really developing new markets in the most difficult countries, ah taking the early stage risks, that business is the natural territory of the DFIs, often supported with specific funds from their governments to make that possible.
00:28:56
Speaker
And in my opinion, it's very essential to do both because this part of the work in the high risk categories is building a pipeline for the private capital mobilization over time.
00:29:10
Speaker
Of course, that doesn't happen from one week to the other. There are years in between, but that requires a strategic vision that has really a long term perspective. And it's the depth of the impact and also the the focus on those areas where the potential impact will be the highest.
00:29:28
Speaker
That's very important. You will not be credible if BFI focuses only on generating very large, low-risk transactions for private capital mobilization.
00:29:40
Speaker
Maybe in the short run, you can build a business on it. In the long run, you will lose your right to exist. And also, you will not have the impact.
Success Stories in Financial Institution Investments
00:29:50
Speaker
you should have and you will not optimize that impact.
00:29:53
Speaker
You know, we're talking a lot about institutional investors and financial considerations. But of course, the reason for doing this and the reason that we are discussing this is because of the impact that you want to make.
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah. And actually, I wanted to ask you if you can give maybe some examples of types of investments or investments that you have made that you think have made an impact and have been really successful in in doing so.
00:30:21
Speaker
Yes. I think a bit underestimated category is the business investing in financial institutions. And then I don't mean microfinance. Of course, microfinance 15 years ago, it was sort of synonym for impact investing Today, impact investing is so much broader than microfinance.
00:30:41
Speaker
But I don't mean microfinance. I mean financial institutions lending and private equity investing because these financial institutions are driving ah development of the private sector in their countries. They're driving local entrepreneurship,
00:30:57
Speaker
They're driving SME business if they have the funding and the incentives to do that. So the DFIs providing long-term loans to banks in emerging markets enable those banks to provide long-term loans to local companies.
00:31:16
Speaker
And increasingly over the years, DFIs put more, well, they really were steering those banks in certain directions and making them aware of the business potential of SMEs, of women-led businesses, of youth entrepreneurs, refugee entrepreneurs.
00:31:35
Speaker
So all of that has a tremendous effect and sounds always a bit boring. I've had some discussions with, well, where people said, yeah, we don't want the financial institution business. We only want the renewable energy because that's real impact and we need to be exposed there.
00:31:52
Speaker
And I've always argued that you but also need the financial institutions because they drive a lot of change on the ground. And as a DFI, even when you have foreign offices, you will never be as close to those entrepreneurs as the local banks can be.
00:32:10
Speaker
And and it it was also not always that obvious because, I mean, especially, for instance, in Africa, countries like like Tanzania, Kenya, the returns banks could earn on, for instance, investing in local government bonds or local real estate, you know, office buildings, hotels.
00:32:30
Speaker
That was really important. enormous. The returns were huge. And then I remember traveling to Kenya because we were trying to set up a private equity proposition for African pension funds and talking to those pension funds about investing in private equity, growth, private equity, you know, enabling businesses to grow and create more employment and ah They said, yeah, but these returns, they are not high enough.
00:32:59
Speaker
If we invest in in government bonds, we yeah earn 18% risk-free, 25% risk-free. I don't know. but Real estate even higher because, you know, these large cities like Nairobi, real estate was booming.
00:33:15
Speaker
But what they didn't realize was that First, their concentration in the portfolio was giving them a really high risk profile because real estate can go down as well.
00:33:28
Speaker
And so banks invested in government bonds. I mean, you wouldn't believe it. I mean, it would be very strange if in the Netherlands or in the UK, banks were having 50% of their portfolio in local government bonds.
00:33:42
Speaker
I mean, that they are then really not playing their role in society that they should play. so We had a lot of interesting discussions around that. Yeah. And it's really one of the important roles of the FIS is to create those incentives for the financial intermediaries and the banks locally.
00:34:00
Speaker
I think that you've been sharing a lot about the different things that you have been doing. Maybe as a summary, it would be nice to hear from you what are the things that you are most proud of in your journey?
Leadership and Personal Growth
00:34:13
Speaker
What are the achievements that you know you think back of? Or maybe also what are the things that you still want to achieve going forward? Wow. Yeah, I think what I'm most proud of are mostly, oh well, of course, setting up FMO investment management.
00:34:30
Speaker
I think that is really the thing I'm most proud of. And I didn't do that by myself. I did that with the team. so And that is actually when I think of situations where I've been able to make a difference is when I have enabled team members to grow, to become more self-confident, to take on new roles, to speak up.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think I like that a lot. I wouldn't have expected that. that I would enjoy that so much. Because when I worked at ABN Amro and we had the people that wanted to do investment banking and you had the people that wanted to do the commercial banking in the local offices and and being managers.
00:35:12
Speaker
And I thought... why would you want to be a manager? Because it would distract you so much from the content. And then when I grew into managerial roles and leadership roles later on, I really grew into it and realized that because of working with other people, being able to inspire them, being able to combine all these skills and talents that complement each other, that that is really very, very satisfactory.
00:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, and that's beautiful. The human dimension of the work. A question that I like to ask all of the guests is how does it feel to be a woman doing this job?
00:35:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think... It feels good. i haven't ah Luckily, I haven't felt constrained or limited because of being a woman.
00:36:02
Speaker
Maybe rather on the contrary, because and that started when I when i moved to Rotterdam to study their economics, that the girls were really a minority, and that's remained the same in ABNMRO and even in FMO. And now in the most of the places that I work, still as a woman, you are ah among the minority.
00:36:26
Speaker
But it also makes it easier to be visible and to be seen, especially if you speak your mind and are not too shy, where I used to be actually a very shy person.
00:36:39
Speaker
So... I learned to speak up and not be afraid. So yeah, and it's a bit of a strange question, right? How does it feel to be a woman in your work? Well, I am a woman, of course, and feels good.
00:36:50
Speaker
but That's very nice. And while exploring this question, I'm also exploring the question of, is there anything that has helped you become your best self?
00:37:01
Speaker
Something that has helped you during your career or your journey as a woman, as a leader to overcome challenges or anything that you would maybe advise or share with the audience other change makers?
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think, well, ah setbacks always enable you to grow. And my most ah severe setbacks were not in the workplace.
00:37:26
Speaker
They were in my private life. And that really made me see clearly what's important in life. and made it also possible to take a somewhat more relaxed position towards your work because well in essence I'm i'm tending to be a workaholic but there's so much you know work is I would never downplay the importance of work because I don't think I could be happy if I I didn't work.
00:37:56
Speaker
But it shouldn't define who you are. It shouldn't be the the one thing driving your choices in life. And I think, well, it's it may sound a bit unoriginal, but being a mother, dealing with the challenges of your kids, it's a big responsibility.
00:38:15
Speaker
It's more important than anything in the workplace. At the same time, it's not an excuse to drop your work. but in critical times. So being able to balance that, I think has been, yeah, has has taught me a lot.
00:38:30
Speaker
Always a question of balance, right?
Finding Optimism and Perspective
00:38:33
Speaker
Being able to find the beauty and in walking that that fine line, right? Thank you so much, Yvonne. And as we're approaching the end of of this so conversation, i like to ask the guests three quick questions.
00:38:48
Speaker
What is inspiring you or who is inspiring you? You won't believe how many times I've been asked this question. And I really cannot come up with any original answer.
00:39:00
Speaker
And I've said in the past, i've I've said, oh, Nelson Mandela, oh, ah Barack Obama. But really, no, I don't want to repeat that again. i think what inspires me is to look at people, and that was what I liked so much about working in emerging markets, to look at people who make the best of their situation and be creative.
00:39:23
Speaker
I spent in a leadership program who traveled to Kenya. I spent the night at the house of a woman. She was a micro entrepreneur and to see the different activities she had and how she made everything she did benefit her family and her community.
00:39:43
Speaker
And, you know, to our standards, she was extremely poor. She lived in quite a, well, not a very strong house. and And she had... two children, but she was very proud because those children could go to the village school. They got up at six in the morning, ah waking us up as well, getting ready for school in their school uniforms.
00:40:06
Speaker
And once she had sent them off to school carrying, ah you know, a jug of milk that came from her own cow. And that was then the school fee. She paid the school fee in kind.
00:40:18
Speaker
And after that, She went to the local, how you call it, the dump, the waste landfill, and she paid for a teacher who provided ah schooling to homeless kids that were living or trying to find scraps of useful waste on this landfill.
00:40:42
Speaker
And she paid for it. And I really felt that was but one of the most inspiring things I've witnessed. Thank you. Absolutely. We have a lot to learn from people like her.
00:40:54
Speaker
What is keeping you optimistic? Well, these days, it's not always easy to remain optimistic, I have to say. But I think the optimism should really be in your small environment, because when you think too much about the bigger ah scheme, it well, you're tempted to lose your optimism.
00:41:14
Speaker
So I remain optimistic by meeting people who want to make a difference. I remain optimistic by seeing investors making different investment decisions.
00:41:28
Speaker
And I think being optimistic is like a character trait that you're lucky to be an optimist. I don't know if you can train to be an optimist. Yeah, really.
00:41:38
Speaker
As you know, I've also suffered some illness and people always said to me, oh, it's so inspiring how you can be so optimistic and so strong. And and I admire that.
00:41:50
Speaker
And then I said, yeah, but I don't do anything to be optimistic. It's who I am. And I'm very happy because it helps you to get through a difficult period.
00:42:00
Speaker
It's not something that I deserve credits for. Well, I don't know. You can nurture it It's something you can nurture. Maybe you cannot change from one day to the other, but you can nurture optimism. And hopefully that's also something that we can bring through this podcast, bringing you know light and optimism to people, showing the change that is happening.
00:42:21
Speaker
No, that's true. And the examples, they really help. And indeed, I That's also true. You can train yourself to pay attention to the positive things that happen in your life and not take them for granted.
00:42:36
Speaker
Absolutely. And that's the last question. Are you reading anything that you would like to recommend to others? It can be anything. and but i read Well, I just started reading this morning a book that a very close friend of mine recommended.
00:42:52
Speaker
And that's now being passed along in our circle of friends. And it's a Dutch book. I don't think it's been translated in English yet. But they it's a book about being flexible in taking different perspectives.
00:43:07
Speaker
which I think with increasing polarization in society, with people really digging themselves deep in in a certain opinion, and then being very unwilling to change their opinion, I think that book, I also know that I'm suffering from that sometimes, that I have an opinion about something or someone, and that I'm not really inclined to change it.
00:43:32
Speaker
And the more fundamental the issues are, the more that happens. And that's something I don't really like about myself. I want to be able to take different perspectives.
00:43:45
Speaker
But that's, yeah. So I'm reading this book also to help myself ah become more flexible in taking different perspectives. and understanding better the position of of other people.
00:43:57
Speaker
I had a ah training years ago and the guy said, where you stand depends on where you sit. A bit of a cheesy one-liner, but when you think about it, it's really true.
00:44:09
Speaker
And so yeah, I'm also in a some sort of bubble. I'm in a global impact investing bubble and we need to watch out for that. Yeah, absolutely. And well, shame that it's not yet in English, but it's a really important so dimension and a reminder that we always should try and take someone else's seat or see things from a different perspective, even if we don't like that perspective. But really try to understand it without judgment.
00:44:39
Speaker
That would help in a lot of situations. Yvonne, thank you so much. Thank you for being with us and for this wonderful conversation. do you have any final thoughts for the audience, for the fellow changemakers, any asks or calls to action?
00:44:57
Speaker
Well, go for it. Don't give up. Keep going. That's great. Yeah, an encouragement for action. Thank you again so much, Yvonne. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for your time.
00:45:09
Speaker
And yeah, i see you soon. Thank you so much, k Krisztina I can't believe we've already had an hour. Time was flying, which is a great testimony to your ah conversational skills as an interviewer.
00:45:23
Speaker
Thank you, Yvonne. And see you soon. Bye. Bye.
00:45:31
Speaker
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00:45:43
Speaker
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00:45:54
Speaker
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