The client

Paribas Personal Finance is a major player in Europe for personal loans via its activities in consumer credit and mortgage lending. A 100% subsidiary of the BNP Paribas Group, BNP Paribas Personal Finance has nearly 20,000 employees and operates in about 30 countries. Under the Cetelem brand, the company offers a full range of personal credit products at sale points and car dealerships and directly to consumers through its customer relations centers and the Internet.

In the Nordics BNP Paribas Personal Finance is branded as Express Bank and was established in 1987 as a collaboration between Handelsbanken and Dansk Supermarked. The bank is therefore strong within retail and currently work with more than 2,000 retailers – including many leading department stores and shops. Every year the bank process more than 400,000 loan applications, which places them among the leading loan providers in the Nordics. They have 300 employees spread over 3 locations in Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

The challenge

1 Change was initially asked to deliver Executive Coaching for CEO Annika Olsson. After a couple of sessions, we agreed to further extend our collaboration to include a Resilient Leadership Program for Annika’s newly formed leadership team in BNP Paribas PB in the Nordics.

We did personal interviews with all 12 Senior Leaders to understand their current challenges. Here are the outcomes:

A newly formed leadership team from 4 different cultures and with different business backgrounds. All wants to get to know each other better – both professionally and personally

Currently under a lot of work pressure, and therefore important to work more structured and efficient

Too much working in silos, not enough cross-collaboration and knowledge sharing across the departments

Better support to each other, build more trust and become ONE leadership team

Working many hours. Wants to build more resilience and obtain a better work-life balance

The Senior Leaders and the organization have been through a lot of changes and transformation over the past 3 years. People and departments are tired. The organization needs new energy, more resilience and motivation to keep performing at a high level

Our solution

BNP Paribas Personal Finance & 1 Change co-created a 9-month Resilient Leadership Program for the Senior Leadership Team in the bank with the aim to increase the level of resilience, build trust, and increase the overall performance of the team.

Here an overview of the Program:

The impact

Each Leader has increased their own resilience by integrating new practices into their professional & personal life. This has improved the work-life balance and given them more capacity to deal with the current transformation that the organization is going through

The Leadership Team supports each other better, cross-collaboration has improved, and they act more as ONE TEAM towards the organization

The level of trust has increased. The team feel they know each other at a deeper level, which helps them to be more honest and open when they collaborate, communicate, and give feedback to each other

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I am very pleased with the results of the Resilient Leadership Program and how it has impacted both the leadership team, but also us as individuals. It’s the combination that makes the program different and unique. And it’s a joy to work with the 1 Change team as they truly understand our business and the situation we are in right now. This has helped us to address and solve some of the most important business and leadership challenges that we are currently facing in the organization.

/ Annika Olsson, CEO, BNP Paribas Personal Finance Nordic

Our collaboration

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BNP Paribas Personal Finance & 1 Change are currently in dialogue about offering the Resilient Leadership Program to 25 Middle Managers and the remaining employees in the Nordics. An important part of this roll-out is for the Senior Management Team to be involved in the delivery of the program, so they can truly show up as role models and further inspire and motivate their teams to increase their resilience and build capacity both at work and in their personal life.

 

“I am excited for our conversations on offering the program to the rest of organization as this will further inspire and engage our people to adopt a growth mindset and also to build a more holistic and sustainable high-performance culture for the entire organization.

/ Annika Olsson, CEO, BNP Paribas Personal Finance Nordic