Stefan Kimmel

Stefan Kimmel

Chief Operating Officer

Share
By William Girling
Kimmel explains how COVID-19 has created digitisation opportunities in banking and why customer-centricity is essential to CBD’s operations...

A graduate of the University of Nürnberg (1992 to 1998) and the University of Georgia (1996 to 1997), Stefan Kimmel’s distinguished career has included roles at some of the most prestigious consultancy companies in the world. Gaining far-reaching expertise on the subject of digital technology at BCG, Oliver Wyman, IBM and PwC, his expansive knowledge on the topic makes him well-placed to personally lead digital transformation efforts at the Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD).

Joining the company in February 2020, on the eve of the global coronavirus lockdown, Kimmel says that the pandemic was a “curveball” at the start of his tenure to say the least. “I hadn’t even had the chance to meet all of my staff before everything was suddenly via Microsoft Teams or Zoom,” he recalls. Kimmel recognised CBD as a great opportunity for putting the theory he’d learned into practice: “After many years of telling clients what to do, I figured I wanted to get my hands dirty. Of course, it’s far more challenging but it's also a lot more rewarding.” It was the bank’s proud history, trajectory and outstanding track record of consistent revenue growth and profitability that captured his attention, as well as its promising commitment to digital transformation. The latter, he explains, is a direct result of CEO Bernd van Linder’s clear and committed long-term strategy.

Part of the new vanguard of ‘next-gen’ COOs, those who maintain a tech-focused outlook and holistic (non-siloed) team structures, Kimmel combines this with his outsider experience gained from working as a consultant. Having gained a solid understanding of what good performance means in a banking context, he is determined to achieve nothing short of the finest results for a bank in the Middle East. When considering how these outcomes will be achieved at CBD, Kimmel emphasises that technological advances will be crucial, although not, perhaps, in the way that many people think. “There's always a lot of talk about everything that’s going on in the market. However, I'd say, in recent years, technology has been far more ‘evolutionary’ than ‘disruptive’,” that is to say: it has been optimising the status quo rather than creating new paradigms entirely. 

Part of the reason for this lies in banking’s status as a highly regulated industry, but the other is a direct result of a core technology: cloud. “If you look at the big platform providers - Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc - the number of capabilities they've integrated into their cloud platforms is mind-boggling,” continues Kimmel. “Regardless of whether it was AI (artificial intelligence), DevOps, or any other cutting-edge technology, it would have previously taken large investments spread over several years to develop. Now, everything is an API (application programming interface) and you can just plug it in; you're not stuck with a 10-year-old infrastructure, you can literally just switch one API for another.”

Read the Commercial Bank of Dubai story in the brochure 

Share

Featured Interviews

Featured

Amit Thawani

Chief Information Officer for Insurance, Pensions and Investments at Lloyds Banking Group

With a history spanning over 250 years, Lloyds Banking Group is undertaking a major transformation to meet the evolving needs of its 27 million customers

Read More

Matthew Parker-Jones

SVP for Global Transaction Banking at Scotiabank

Matthew Parker-Jones discusses his role as SVP for Global Transaction Banking at Scotiabank and looks back at a career in payments

Read More
“It’s important to emphasise we’re not just a Canadian bank, we're a global bank”
Matthew Parker-Jones
SVP for Global Transaction Banking at Scotiabank

Prema Varadhan

President Product and Chief Operating Officer at Temenos

Temenos COO & President of Product Prema Varadhan discusses her role as an innovation leader at the SaaS cloud banking company

Read More

Paul Swinton

Co-founder and Executive Chair at B4B Payments

We track the career of Paul Swinton, from founding BaaS provider B4B Payments to its launch in the US

Read More

Tongtong Gong

Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Amberdata

We speak to Tongtong Gong, COO and Co-founder of Amberdata, the startup delivering digital assets data into blockchain, crypto and DeFi, empowering FIs

Read More

Amit Thawani

Chief Information Officer for Insurance, Pensions and Investments at Lloyds Banking Group

With a history spanning over 250 years, Lloyds Banking Group is undertaking a major transformation to meet the evolving needs of its 27 million customers

Read More