Argenta had sixty years of experience in Belgium when it decided in 2015 to grow the organization into a digital bank in the Netherlands. For this, an own organization had to be set up. Pipple helped that organization make data driven from the very beginning.

Flexible

Argenta is one of the top ten largest mortgage lenders in the Netherlands. Yet in terms of organization, it is five to ten times smaller than some competitors. Consciously, according to Sander Blommaert. He is one of the two directors and ultimately responsible for finance and risk management at Argenta Netherlands. “We buy services that others are better at. In this way, we can still serve almost 300,000 customers at relatively low costs with our own small organization.” They do keep data management and credit risk in their own hands. Since the start of the digital bank, they have been permanently accompanied by one or more data scientists from Pipple. With the help of their expertise, Argenta integrates a sometimes seemingly endless stream of regulations into systems, processes and decision-making in a timely and accurate manner.

Insights from data

“Pipple helped us manage the credit risks in the portfolio and discover trends,” says Blommaert. “As a result, we now engage with the customer at smarter moments.” It also gave them considerable savings. “Our system automatically counted the number of customers who would have missed a payment. We based our losses on that. We knew this needed correction, but we couldn’t get it any sharper. Pipple allows us to perform a corrective bypass with data checks. Since then, we no longer write losses in unjustified cases, so we have to set aside less money.”

Young talent

In addition to Ruud Mullers, several Pippelaars have already contributed to the development of the bank. Almost all of them were there for at least a year; a demand of Blommaert. “We benefit from continuity.” Blommaert thinks that the fact that they are almost always young dogs without too much experience is an advantage. “They are trained in current, complex data and IT issues and do not suffer from ingrained patterns. Moreover, Jeroen de Haas has a keen eye for attracting young top talent and the favor factor. Pipple econometricians are always eager and curious.”