Voice of Experience: Petra Van Hoeken, Chief Risk Officer – EMEA, RBS Global Banking & Markets

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Make sure you enter your career excited, that you have a desire to do the job and that you want it,” advised Petra Van Hoeken, Chief Risk Officer – EMEA, RBS Global Banking & Markets.

Van Hoeken, whose career has spanned decades and has worked in different roles around the world, has stayed true to this mantra herself. Part of her success, she explained, has to do with her openness to new opportunities.

She continued, “It’s amazing what kinds of opportunities there are. I see so many youngsters coming into their careers and they want to plan everything. My advice is to be open minded and learn.”

A Global Career Path

Van Hoeken, a lawyer by profession, started working in banking 25 years ago. “I joined ABN AMRO, a Dutch bank with an international presence. I started as a junior banker, working as a relationship manager and then moved on to a staff function and a product role.”

She continued, “Then I met my husband at the bank. When he was asked to go abroad, to Spain, we both went. It was supposed to be a temporary, two-year assignment, but I ended up spending 14 years abroad.”

Van Hoeken spent three and a half years in Spain working on the commercial side, and then accompanied her husband to Asia when he was assigned to a new role in Treasury. “This was the early ’90s,” she recalled, “and ABN AMRO was really building out its regional offices in Asia Pacific.”

“You really have to grab opportunities when they present themselves. And I was hence very happy to get a local Asian contract and work in the regional risk office at the time,” she explained. When the Asian Crisis hit in 1997, she was asked to move into a risk-based role.

She continued, “The bank identified me as top talent, and asked me to move to a different country – this time, my husband followed me.”

Van Hoeken took a role in Germany, in the lending business, and from there, ABN AMRO asked her to take on the Chief Risk Officer role for North America, which meant moving to New York. “I thought it would be quite a challenge, but the Board was quite adamant that they wanted me in the role, so I went.”

“I had a fantastic time and learned a lot about the Markets business, but also about people. But it lasted only 2 years due to yet another restructuring of our Investment Bank.” In 2006, after 14 years abroad she moved back to the Netherlands.

Van Hoeken was ready for a new kind of challenge. Rather than taking on another role in risk or the business, she decided to try something very different. “I came back as the Global Head of Sustainable Development, and created a new unit of Public Affairs,” she explained.

But shortly afterward, ABN AMRO was acquired by RBS, and she was named the Chief Risk Officer for Europe, Middle East & Africa in the combined institution.

Moments of Pride

Van Hoeken highlighted two career experiences that have made her proud.

The first was building a winning team in a challenging situation. “I really liked it when I moved to Frankfurt, and was asked to lead a business team. I was the head of portfolio management in our lending business, and suddenly I was leading 180 professionals across Europe.”

She continued, “And in that first year, when I took charge, we were the most profitable business in the bank. Being able to engage and get people to work toward a common goal was exciting.”

The second achievement is her decision to go into sustainability when she returned to the Netherlands. “I picked a role no one ever expected to be a success – people said it was a career breaker.”

“I am really pretty proud of that – helping to make the Bank a more responsible corporate citizen. And I was still able to move onto another role. It wasn’t a career breaker at all.”

Now back in the Risk area, Van Hoeken said, “The future of banking is pretty uncertain, but again this comes with opportunity. We have to do things differently than we did.”

Van Hoeken is also involved with increasing diversity at the bank. She continued, “I’m very much trying to engage with people to take ownership of their career. Whether they’re in Moscow, Frankfurt, the UK – it is important to have different perspectives.”

“I’m trying to create opportunities for people to move if they want. This is a very difficult time with so much uncertainty, but you have to understand that even in uncertainty, you need to find a way to excel at your work.”

Advice for Women in the Financial Services

“I sometimes think we are our own worst enemy. I think if you really want, you can do a lot,” she said.

“Too many women back down too easily, or don’t really want it, or are afraid of it,” she continued. “And certainly some parts of the banking are pretty Anglo-Saxon male driven, and this is always on your mind when you are in a senior position. It’s difficult.”

She advised women to stay true to themselves, rather than play to a stereotypically male model of leadership. “Make sure you have a teamwork mindset. Share and respect others.”

She added, “You need to delegate. Some senior women I see around me try to do it all themselves.”

Van Hoeken said that as RBS continues to restructure and rebuild its culture in the wake of the global financial crisis, it is working to better structure its diversity initiative. “I would add that diversity is clearly on the agenda, but diversity is so much broader than gender or ethnicity,” she explained.

She said one of her best learning experiences so far has been participating in a mentoring program. “When I was in New York, I had the opportunity to select a board member to be a mentor – and I picked a guy in the Netherlands who did a completely different role to anything that I did.”

“It didn’t feel like mentoring. It was really helpful.”

She added, “Now I myself am a mentor – for women and for men. It’s very good – it’s on a more informal basis, but I think you can help people more that way. We talk about how to maneuver the organization, and discuss obstacles and challenges.”

In Her Personal Time

“I do so much with my work, but in my personal time, I play golf quite fanatically,” Van Hoeken said. “That served me well in Asia and in the US.”

“I also spend time with my children, who are 12, 15, and 17 – to raise them to be responsible citizens… that’s challenging enough!” she laughed.