When ASN Bank chief technology officer (CTO) Sebastiaan Kalshoven isn’t driving IT and business change at the Dutch retail bank, he can often be found at the local swimming pool training his daughter and other kids to become competitive athletes.
His 10-year-old daughter dreams of winning Olympic gold, so three times a week Kalshoven takes a group of young swimmers who share the same ambition. It’s a deep plunge away from the pressures of IT management but it’s similar to the day job in many ways. “What I do in my spare time is also focused on continuous improvement,” he says.
Even if there’s a connection between the swimming lessons and work, the break from routine is welcome. Kalshoven has been deeply involved in the strategic change processes at ASN Bank, the fourth largest retail bank in the Netherlands.
It has a 200-year history and was previously recognised through its four well-known brands, including RegioBank and SNS. Parent brand De Volksbank announced that as of 1 July, it and all its brands would continue to operate under the single name of ASN Bank.
The choice for one retail brand is an essential step in the simplification of the organisation as part of a major transformation. The process involves comprehensive integration, revamping core infrastructure and bolstering cyber security. As tech chief and programme director, Kalshoven is at the heart of this.
Kalshoven is no stranger to the challenges of the fast-changing, ultra-competitive banking sector. He spent almost 10 years at ING before leaving for De Volksbank in 2022. In this role, he has overseen key transformations: shifting IT operations from the bank’s own servers to cloud infrastructure and implementing financial operations (FinOps) and agile methodologies.
De Volksbank decided to build their IT systems using Nutanix technology combined with Amazon’s cloud services (AWS). The goal was to achieve scalability, flexibility, automation and stability of systems with flexibility and scale-up, while keeping IT operations consistent, irrespective of whether they run on the bank’s own servers or in the cloud.
Kalshoven calls this “business over tech enablement” – essentially putting business needs first while maintaining flexibility and minimising disruption. This shift proved timely given the upheaval in the tech industry after Broadcom acquired VMware and announced major changes to products and pricing that affected countless businesses.
Risky business
Since December 2024, Kalshoven has been involved in leading the transformation programme alongside his regular duties. The benefits for customers of operating under a single brand include more uniform products, better stakeholder relationships and clearer communication. From a technology perspective, this means making operations more efficient, linking up various IT systems and creating a streamlined but powerful platform.
The initiative centres on bringing everything under a unified ASN brand which should deliver better value for customers through standardised products, stakeholder engagement and open communications. The IT aspect is vital, involving optimising operations, integrating technology engines and creating a robust but slimline platform. The aim is to build a flexible foundation that enables technology to evolve with the bank’s changing needs.
Although there is a strong desire to mitigate risk, an opposing dynamic is also at play: Kalshoven’s personal appetite for leaning into change and getting things done. “The most rewarding aspect is anticipating and solving potential challenges,” he says. “You can foresee problems – both technical and organisational – and develop solutions before they have a negative impact.”
Change at this scale requires a bold outlook and clear plans for delivery according to milestones. “It’s like open-heart surgery, because we will only find out how complex the organisation has made the IT implementation when we start touching the interfaces,” he says.
“We’ll first remove the specific products from our current systems that will make the implementation simpler, and then we take out customer administration and product administration. So, you keep the core system and see the impact on specific product lines and value streams.”
Kalshoven’s experience with a similar initiative at ING took seven years. He believes things will move faster this time, adding: “The challenge is less complex because we have fewer products to deal with. It’s still going to take a while, but we’re aiming to have everything done in three years with our aim to become simpler and reduce complexity.”
‘Set phasers to stun’
Kalshoven says that a phased approach keeps options open and manages uncertainty: “It’s planning for different scenarios, based on which we decide how to implement changes and what to ask of our teams. For instance, all our applications should move to an active/active setup, which is completely different to what the bank was used to earlier.
“Before, the approach was, ‘If something goes wrong, we’ll switch from A to B, and it will take us anything from eight to 10 hours to get services up and running again for our customers.’ But the more applications that are active-active, the less customer impact there is, and the more comfortable you are that you can cater for any eventuality, so you can slim down the amount of IT platforms and have a limited set of applications.”
Ultimately, Kalshoven and ASN Bank are seeking to jettison legacy wherever possible and move to modern IT architecture. This shift also reflects Kalshoven’s view of the role of tech chiefs.
“Our main challenge as IT leaders is constantly to see what’s out there and then step in at the right moment”
Sebastiaan Kalshovend, ASN Bank
“Our main challenge as IT leaders is constantly to see what’s out there and then step in at the right moment,” he says. “That’s what you see in AI – we’re almost through the hype cycle and now there’s a need to deliver real value.
“Even containers – a technology that’s been around for nearly a decade – is now only finally reaching maturity. The technology is not the problem; it’s mastering new concepts and approaches. You need to understand how to implement the technology in practice and figure out how it adds value to your business.”
Change can be challenging, but Kalshoven says that explaining the mission and allocating clear responsibility can calm nerves. “I focus on what I call building an engineering culture,” he says. “Engineers who understand specific technologies and now have the opportunity to start learning something else.
“That’s good for them as it keeps them relevant in their field: changes are not a threat but an opportunity to make their daily work more interesting. It’s like training to win the gold medal; you need to make consistent improvements to get there.
When experts share their knowledge, it bolsters their own engagement while improving implementation, Kalshoven adds. “We involve the engineers from the original solutions, and they influence how we implement that new solution because they bring 30 or 35 years of experience. They’ll ask questions like, ‘What went wrong before? And how do we overcome it in a new system?’”
Focus on teamwork
When I suggest that Kalshoven might need to clone himself to deal with everything, he replies: “It takes a real team effort to keep daily IT operations running while implementing the transformation. Everyone is involved, even people in the wider organisation. I set up my team for success so they can handle things independently, but they know I’m here if they hit any snags.
“My team takes care of the day-to-day business, but I step in whenever they need guidance. It makes it interesting, because it means juggling two different challenges on different timescales. That’s what drives me: constantly pushing limits while learning. I like to anticipate the issues that will arise, to experiment, but also to make sure that it happens in a safe environment. Freedom to innovate is ultimately only possible from a stable basis.”
Kalshoven works closely with the CIO and other members of senior management. He baulks at the common perception of the CTO, adding: “CTOs are regarded as being completely focused on infrastructure plumbing, but they also need to have a broader sense of what happens in business. That’s why last year I also completed my executive MBA. The programme covered a lot of topics like strategy, legal, marketing, customer experience and so on.
“My main goal now is to get closer to customers by being responsible for ASN’s technology backbone. The closer you are to the customers, the more interesting the work becomes, because you really touch people’s lives and how they do their banking.”
When asked if more technology leaders will have the opportunity to become CEOs, he responds: ”I expect more boards will realise they need digital expertise, especially with incoming DORA regulations requiring board members to be more tech-savvy. There’ll be no choice but to offer seats on the board to people like CIOs and CTOs. But it’s also about ensuring this knowledge is disseminated.
“In that respect it is my responsibility to support and train my colleagues to make sure they start understanding all this. I can’t be the only one who understands the nuts and bolts of technology, because decisions in area A always affect what happens in area B and C, right? I would like to see more tech expertise generally.”
This involves a certain amount of diplomacy.
“You have to really showcase the value of the technology. Take the move to Nutanix – that is widely considered as a cost-cutting or risk mitigation activity, and people understand that completely. The question is, where is the real added value? So, if I can talk about quicker time to market, or fewer incidents or a shorter time needed to resolve them, then it really becomes more tangible for them. FinOps helps because everything is then translated into cost or monetary value.”
We’re living in a world where business and technology decisions are interconnected and basically the same thing now – which makes it harder than ever for leaders to stay in their own swimming lanes.
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