What Leaders Want | Chief Product & Technology Officer – Xavier Rebeuf

Caroline Béguin: So Xavier, I’ve briefly introduced you, but can you share your personal experience in your own words and tell us what motivated you to specialize in the FinTech world? 

Xavier Rebeuf: I started in a completely different world, which is research and teaching, but after that, I moved to the Sopra Steria, to the consultancy, and I decided that I really wanted to be more owner on the objective of the software and on its purpose. And so that’s why, for me, SBS as an editor is very interesting because really you bring an added value to the client, really in an adopt mode for your software, so you have convictions, you can defend them to the clients. And I think in the world of FinTech, things are moving very fast, so it’s very interesting in the end to participate in that dynamic. 

Caroline Béguin: How would you describe your role so even a child could understand what you do? 

Xavier Rebeuf: I’m supervising the conception, the development, and the operation of all the products of Sopra Banking Software. So if something doesn’t work, more or less, it’s my fault.

Caroline Béguin: What does a day in the life of a Chief Product and Technology Officer look like at SBS? 

Xavier Rebeuf: A lot of diversity, a lot of different people to meet, different concerns, and what I like in that job is that I have an agenda for sure at the beginning of the day, but at the end, this world have a lot of surprise and a lot of change, so it’s quite dynamic and very interesting.

Caroline Béguin: Can you share a proud moment of your career when you had a significant impact on SBS? 

Xavier Rebeuf: I remember very well the meeting we had with Eric Biery to decide to rewrite a new core banking, which was Digital Core, which had another name at that time. But really, the decision to say we cannot continue evolving our existing asset, we need something new to address the market, and perhaps we were, at that time, a little bit naive with that, but it was very interesting and the beginning of a great adventure. Much more real time, taking advantage of the cloud to be scalable and much more client-centric than process-centric. And now we see that with all the revolution around data and so on, the cloud is a very important asset in that disruption for us, and we answer with a brand-new solution for our clients. So I think it was a necessary decision, and now I’m not regretting that decision at all. Building something new is quite exciting for a lot of people, so it brings a new dynamic inside the company. It’s also helped to renew our image regarding our clients. When we start to present that new approach, the clients say: “Okay, I’m on an old version of the product, but I see that you are facing the future and addressing the following disruptions.” So it’s reinforced at the end that you are a trusted partner for them. So it was very important, I think at that time, and now we have three clients who have signed for this brand-new core banking, so we are at the moment of a concretization of that dream.

Caroline Béguin: What is the most significant challenge you have faced as Chief Product and Technology Officer at SBS? 

Xavier Rebeuf: The difficulty is, if we take the example of Digital Core, is between the initial idea and the proof from the market that you were right, you have several years. So for sure, you have a lot of doubts. You are looking at the market and so on to see if we are in a good trajectory or not. But it’s a long journey, and you have to be resilient in what you have decided in order to obtain the result at the end. 

Caroline Béguin: We’ve had a quick overview of your career, your role, daily work, proudest moment, and biggest challenge as Chief Product and Technology Officer at SBS. Now, I’d like to tap into your expertise to discuss the future of FinTech, starting with what technology trends do you believe will shape the next five years for FinTech? 

Xavier Rebeuf: I think the first one was the cloud. Now we are addressing the data platform, the way of gathering data and making it available, because if you look at what a bank knows in your life, they know almost everything. And the future you can build on top of that is with AI, which just arriving and I think we are just seeing the first use cases possible to modify the user experience of the end user, the efficiency to manage this data, and to give an hyper personalization for the client, and I think there’s a lot which come with that technology.

Caroline Béguin: What can we do about AI in general to directly impact the client experience? 

Xavier Rebeuf: We are starting a very interesting use case of what we call  “digital banking suite”. So the engagement part, in particular for onboarding, taking advantage of AI to have a prompt and to renovate the experience of the end user of the bank at the end, to be more efficient and more modern in the way of using the AI. And it’s an initiative coming directly from the product line, which seems to me very interesting and very promising.

Caroline Béguin: Is there a recent innovation at SBS that you’re particularly proud of? 

Xavier Rebeuf: Really, for me, is the data platform. The ability to build a data lake for all our product, which is the new one, the old one, in the same way, and the ability to provide to the client the significant data for their use case. Before the core banking that was more a black box, now, you can imagine a lot of use cases taking advantage of this data. Perhaps it’s not very visible at that time, but with the use case we will build on top of that, you will have the illustration of how powerful the data in a bank can be.

Caroline Béguin: How do you balance innovation with the strict regulatory environment of banking? 

Xavier Rebeuf: It’s a very big, tough question. First, people saying that because we are a regulated industry, it’s impossible to innovate, I think they are wrong. We see with Apple Pay, with a lot of innovations in that world, that including in the domain of the bank, we can disrupt the market. And I’m convinced that, yes, we have some challenges to face. If you look at AI, for instance AI gives you advice or a decision, but in a regulated world, you have to prove why you are taking that action, and you cannot say just because ChatGPT told you that, it’s not a sufficient reason. So there’s a job to do around that, but I’m convinced that we have to achieve that, otherwise others will find that way. 

Caroline Béguin: What do you like about working with banks and shaping their digital journey?

Xavier Rebeuf: I think we can have a very positive impact on the way you are using a bank. I am using a bank, which is in general, seen as very traditional, very old-fashioned, and the engagement part and the user experience can be totally different. Why not introduce the carbon impact, for instance, for the user to be conscious of what he’s doing for the planet using a bank? There are some initiatives there. We are at a really early stage in SBS, but we are thinking of it. 

Caroline Béguin: What do you think the client journey with this bank will look like in 10 years? 

Xavier Rebeuf: Very different, depending on the use case, and very personalized to really what the client needs. For the moment, your experience with the bank is mainly derived by a standard process. You are wanting to make a payment, so you are making all the same steps, and it’s very normalized and very standardized. Tomorrow, you have a problem, and the interface will solve it for you. So you will express your problem. It would be a combination of several processes of the core banking, but hiding from your perceptions, and we will only ask the real interesting questions you have in order to obtain the result.

Caroline Béguin: If you could predict one radical change in banking due to Fintech innovation, what could it be? 

Xavier Rebeuf: I think in the future it’s not a scoop, but it’s the bank integrated in a wider user experience. Bank, at the end, if you look really, has to be more invisible in most of the use cases you are thinking of. You don’t want to have a bank to have a bank. You want to have the capacity to buy more transparently, a new car with a loan behind, but you don’t even want to know how it works, and more or less, more and more, the bank is embedded in another act of life. And  I think this is the real revolution of Fintech. It has started already with payment. You see that a lot of use cases you have in your real life, there’s a payment at the end, but you are not really aware of. It’s automatic, and it’s hidden behind the wider use case. I think this will be more spread all over the different areas of banks in the future. 

Caroline Béguin: Talking about the future, is there a bold idea or dream technology you’d love to see come to life in the industry? 

Xavier Rebeuf: About GenAI, we can have very fun and descriptive usage of that. I don’t think I have in mind at that moment, but in the future, this will be. Because at the end, the experience with the bank is not isolated from the experience you have with Netflix or with another area. If you have some disruption there at a certain point of time, our clients or the clients of our clients will expect to have exactly that experience in the banks. So you can say for the moment, GenAI is not for a regulated area, but at the end, I’m sure that in the future we will move in that direction also. I’m sure that in five years you will not want to have a menu with,file, edit, and so on, and spend some time to find the functionality you need. At the end, you want to ask the machine, “I have that problem,” and it will find the good process for that. So you will need a prompt or a way of speaking to the machine, and it will answer, advise you and so on. That’s what is fun.

Caroline Béguin: Given your insights on how innovation will reshape the industry, how do you, as a leader, stay informed and inspired in such a fast-evolving field? 

Xavier Rebeuf: Working with the team. I think everybody can bring new ideas. There’s an emulation between, between the team in the chapter and the product lines, and things are changing very fast. I cannot be alone facing all this change and be aware of everything, so I think teamwork is really key in that world.

Caroline Béguin: How do you keep up? Because the new generation are really digital native. How do you not feel..

Xavier Rebeuf: Outdated?

Caroline Béguin: Yeah.

Xavier Rebeuf: Perhaps I am at first, I’m not sure. But really, listening to them. Listening to them, and I think, this way of working at the end, It’s much more natural. I think it’s quite natural for me to, to listen to people, and perhaps what I’m bringing to them at the same time is also to say that we have time for debate, after that, we have time for execution, and perhaps if we see something, we can be agile and question again what we are doing. But, the idea is managing that moment of brainstorming and execution, in order to preserve the efficiency of the group. So I think they bring me a lot of new ideas, way of working, as we said, a lot of exchange, and at the same time, my experience is to put some boundaries to their way of thinking in order to remain efficient in some way.

Caroline Béguin: Talking about your teams and collaboration, how do you approach mentoring or inspiring the next generation of tech leaders? 

Xavier Rebeuf: I will come back to the same idea at the end. The challenges are too wide, and the technology is too rich to manage everything on your own. So we need collective intelligence much more than an individual one. So for me, what is inspiring the new generation is that they are used to working in networks, I would say, and communities, and so on. And I believe that it’s much, much more efficient than the hierarchical point of view we had in the past.

Caroline Béguin: Can you share a personal anecdote or life lesson that has shaped your leadership style?

Xavier Rebeuf: Well, I think it’s more than an anecdote, it’s a life lesson. In what I’ve learned, I learned a lot in Sopra Steria and in Sopra Banking, but what is important is not to make mistakes. It’s to fail fast and to recognize your mistake and restart again. At the beginning, you are quite paralyzed because you want to do everything perfectly, and the world is not like that. So I learned, thanks to the team. We have the right to make mistakes. What is important is to react and to adjust.

Caroline Béguin: What would you like your teams to remember about you? 

Xavier Rebeuf: Perhaps someone close to them and close to their problem. I want to be someone really accessible in order to be able to address the real concern. My fear is to be in an ivory tower and not to listen from the ground, because most of the time, the truth comes from the ground.

Caroline Béguin: What is one piece of advice you wish you had received earlier in your career? 

Xavier Rebeuf: Work with the team. Listen to them. Managing is not imposing. Managing is, before all, listening, taking ideas, and after that, bringing something new. And once we have decided, yes, we execute, and there’s discipline in the execution. But everybody can have a good idea, and I think this initial brainstorming or exchange with the team, I think I would love to have that advice at the beginning.

Caroline Béguin: What is a book, podcast, or resource you would recommend to those interested in FinTech? 

Xavier Rebeuf: There’s a lot of different sources of information. Personally, I use a lot of our technological partners, cloud providers or third parties who have really deep information about the new technology arriving, and so on. This helps a lot, in particular, when you have an annual conference, you can subscribe for free, listen to the news and it’s not dedicated to FinTech most of the time, but you know your business context. You can see if this brand-new idea can be applicable in our context or not, and this helps to be not a follower, but perhaps also innovate with this new technology. 

Caroline Béguin: As a leader yourself what do you think leaders really want?

Xavier Rebeuf: I want, at the end, to be successful in a team, motivated. I want to build something. Since my first age, I have wanted to build something with people and be proud of what I’m building. So that’s exactly where I am right now in SBS. 

Caroline Béguin: Thank you, Xavier for being with us and  sharing your time

Xavier Rebeuf: Thank you