Geert Van Mol - CDO of Belfius - Authenticity, User Experience and Playing The Long Game

Summary: Geert Van Mol is Chief Digital Officer and board member at Belfius - Bank and insurer used by 30% of Belgian citizens. He has held this position for 4 years and joined the Management Board last year. Belfius is the pioneer in mobile banking in Belgium. Their mobile application has been recognised for its cutting-edge functionality and user experience. Since the banking crisis of 2008 the Bank's leadership was faced with the dilemma of rethinking their values and regaining trust of their customers, which led to the company culture focused on passion, emotion, empathy and cooperation. In this episode of Leadership Deep Dive, Geert Van Mol talks with Hendrik Deckers about obsession with great user experience design, the possible future of digital banking, gradually building the position of Belfius on the difficult job market, choosing between hard skills and cultural fit, and the many surprising lessons he learned through coaching. TABLE OF CONTENTS 00:48 - Introduction 01:30 - Belfius Mobile banking platform 12:40 - How do you see mobile banking evolving in the next 5-10 years? 17:50 - Owning financial data and becoming a bank - case of Facebook and Google 19:40 - Digital car insurance app by Belfius 21:43 - How Digital and IT are organised at Belfius 26:12 - Attracting IT & digital talent 30:55 - Geert's management style 32:35 - From user experience design to emotion design 33:13 - Geert's MBTI profile 38:00 - Geert's plan for the next few years at Belfius 41:50 - The parallels between digital innovation and music 47:02 - Geert's personal mantra 48:10 - Geert's mentors and mentoring goals 51:28 - Advice for future digital leaders 54:38 - The importance of building ecosystems and joining forces locally