Voice-over: This is Leaders in Finance, a podcast where we learn more about the people behind successful careers. We speak with the leaders of today and tomorrow to discuss their motivations, their organizations, and their personal lives. Why? Because the financial sector could use a little more honest conversation. Our guest this episode is head of retail at a bank that needs no introduction. She’s full of wonderful insights and stories, like the one about how she first joined the bank as a CEO at 34 years old.
Pinar: So I went to tell them that you guys have made this acquisition, which was probably not the best structure I would have chosen. Second, you’re not managing this well. And third, I see very few chances of you succeeding. And then I left to go back home. On the way back, I got a call, asking if you know so well, then come and run it.
Voice-over: She has an incredibly impressive work history, and that’s no coincidence.
Pinar: And my character is one that, when things are a bit difficult, or when most people say it’s not possible, I want to take on the challenge.
Voice-over: And she has the best advice for leaders and starters.
Pinar: Richness comes from experience, not from money, and who you work with matters.
Voice-over: Our honorable guest is Pinar Abay, head of retail banking at ING. Your host is Jeroen Broekema.
Jeroen: Welcome to a new episode of Leaders in Finance. This week, our guest is Pinar Abay, a member of the management board at ING. Welcome, Pinar.
Pinar: Great to have you here.
Jeroen: That’s right, we’re in your offices here in Amsterdam. Before I introduce you, I would like to thank the partners of Leaders in Finance for their ongoing support. They are Kayak, EY, MeDirect, and Roland Berger. We’re very grateful to our partners. Now, let’s move on to my guest. As part of a good tradition at Leaders in Finance, I’ll start by spelling the name of my guest. That’s Pinar, P-I-N-A-R, and Abay, A-B-A-Y. Pinar has been a member of the management board at ING Group since January 2020. She currently serves as head of retail banking. She’s also a member of the supervisory board at ING-DiBa in Germany and a board member of EPI, the European Payments Initiative. In 2016, she became the chair of ING Belgium and continues to serve as a board member. Pinar began her career in 1998 at McKinsey, where she worked in Istanbul, San Francisco, and New York. In 2011, she joined ING as CEO and board member of ING Turkey, becoming the youngest bank CEO in Turkey at the age of 34. Pinar studied economics at, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing this correctly, Bilkent University.
Pinar: Perfect.
Jeroen: Perfect. Oh, thank you. In Turkey, and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in the US. Born in Ankara in 1977, she holds Turkish nationality. Pinar is 47 years old and lives with her husband and two children in Amsterdam. That gives an introduction of who you are, a little bit, and we will probably find out much more during this conversation.
First of all, Pinar, as I said before, thanks again for taking the time. I’d love to understand what is the realm, the responsibility, of all the things you do — because you do a lot of things. So, please tell me more.
Pinar: Well, at ING, my responsibility is to run the retail bank. The retail bank has approximately 40 million clients across 10 countries. That’s roughly two-thirds of our bank in size. And I’m responsible for the universal banks we have in these 10 countries. And not only the clients like you and I — private individuals, we call it — but also SMEs in these countries, mid-cap clients, and recently also private banking wealth. So yeah, that’s what I do. I travel a lot. It’s all the way from Australia to Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Romania, Poland, Turkey, Luxembourg. In addition to the Netherlands, it’s quite a geography.
Jeroen: And when I was preparing for this, and I read about these 10 countries and all these different kinds of clients you have — right, from SMEs to individuals and everything in between — is there somehow a way to serve them in the same way, or is it all tailor-made? And where are you on that spectrum?
Pinar: I describe my job as: we’re in the business of making banking simple, accessible to many more millions, right? So I think the common ground of whatever we do at ING is—whether it’s an SME client, a private banking wealth client, or a private individual—we would like to have them do things that they love to do in life and spend little time on what I call the bureaucracy of doing banking. Because people actually need banking, but they don’t need to spend a lot of time on the way we do banking. So what is the common thing across all these segments? We are very good at making banking relatively simple, instant, accessible. And that’s the common thing.
And of course, there are a lot of synergies, because if you look around the world, for instance, the majority of wealth in countries is generated by entrepreneurs. I mean, this country is a fantastic example—being the Netherlands—but the same goes for Belgium. So therefore, there are quite a bit of synergies: you serve your clients on the SME side, you help them across many years—sometimes, by the way, across generations—to create wealth in the family business. And then you start to serve them on the family side to see how they preserve wealth or pass that wealth to the next generation.
Similarly, we acquire a lot of retail clients around the world. I mean, we are reaching 40 million—it’s quite a size. And these clients need simple banking solutions. But when they need to buy a home, or they need advice for their savings or investment choices, then ING is there with a click of a button. And then they start a company—we help them start a company. Sometimes they inherit wealth—we help them on wealth. So this whole ecosystem has so much consistency in it, that what I try to focus on in my job is the fundamentals of it, and how we can actually profoundly create these synergies across segments, across multiple markets.
Nothing is identical, I can tell you, because people have different needs across the globe. But there are a lot of common things in the purpose of what we do. So I try to focus on the purpose.
Jeroen: That makes sense. And from a cultural perspective, let’s take an example. I’m an SME myself. So when I need a loan, and I say: Pinar, I need 100k and I’m here. But let’s say I’m exactly the same entrepreneur in Australia—how different is the experience? Is it pretty much the same? Or is it still culturally worded differently, or is it a different process that I go through?
Pinar: The fundamentals of opening an account, making payments, applying for a simple loan for an SME are almost identical. So therefore, you actually benefit — and that’s what we try to do at ING across many countries — from the technology blocks we use. I’ll give you one example. I hope you’re a recent client of ours, also in the Netherlands. Maybe you use our famous app. And I hope you like it. As of a couple of weeks ago, that same app that you — and many of our clients, reaching more than 80 million in this country, the Netherlands — use, is now launched in Italy. So it’s the identical mobile experience we launched. And as we speak, the app you hopefully use as a self-employed person here in this country is being launched in Romania. As of last week, we launched the same mobile app in Australia on public cloud. So the experience is pretty identical. Of course, there are different products because there are different fiscal regimes. You may put different things on the shelf to cater for what I call the last local mile. But when you get to that last local mile, there are many things that are quite similar, where we need to enjoy sharing from each other.
And why is this important for clients? Because when we do things down, we can do it fast. For instance, in this country, fraud is a big topic. We launched a great feature last year where we can actually check the caller — that we could launch neatly in a couple of weeks, just because we’re on the same technology platform. And fraud is equally a big topic for many clients in Italy as well. But I respect local differences, and that last local mile matters, and the local input matters. And we co-design. So not everything is designed here in the Netherlands — we have amazing teams everywhere, and we co-create, produce once, and share for all. That’s basically the philosophy I’m trying to establish.
Jeroen: I like the way you put it. So if you look at your week, it must be intense weeks as…
Pinar: My weeks are a bit crazy.
Jeroen: A bit crazy, hectic schedules and stuff. But if you look at it at a very, very high level, what are the biggest chunks of time you’re spending? And I’m thinking about how much time would you spend on regulation and talking to all kinds of supervisors, and which part do you spend on your own management team, and which part with all kinds of other stakeholders within the company, or which part with clients? So where do you spend the most time?
Pinar: I’m a bit obsessed with customer experience. So I spend a significant amount of time on customer experience — what happens on our channels, what goes into the call center and why — what I call friction. Friction is a big word for me. I really want to make banking frictionless. And I spend a lot of time getting friction out of our universe for people. So I would say probably, on an average week, 30 to 40% of my time goes into meetings where we literally look at how we can improve the customer experience across the globe.
Then I also spend quite a bit of time — probably another 30% at least — on people topics. I’m equally passionate about hiring good people, retaining good people, making sure they get proper recognition. They should be caring but also challenging. So you can easily find me meeting with talents at least a few times a week. Every country I go to, I always meet our talents. But I also meet external talents. Even if we don’t need people — people sometimes make fun of me: why would you spend so much time just to meet people? Because I love to meet amazing people and make sure that one day they join ING. So that’s a big part of it.
The rest, of course, goes into long board meetings, regulatory meetings, and making sure we do things safely and soundly. Because you can have an amazing experience, amazing people — but if you do things wrong in compliance or risk management or regulatory, especially in retail banking, you can really lose everything in reputation. So that reputation is my hygiene factor. I have almost a zero-tolerance policy on these things. That also takes my time. But I must say that on that ground, we have quite good disciplines. And if you keep that discipline down, you can enjoy the time you spend on other things.
Jeroen: Let’s do some follow-ups on these two major chunks of your time, which are friction and people, right? To summarize them. On the people side, what’s the number one thing for you when it comes to keeping people—keeping your talent with you?
Pinar: I think good people want to do big things, and good people want to work in winning teams. Good people want to work in environments where there is a greater purpose. What I try to do is share, co-create, think about big things. We have named our retail strategy Be First, simply because we told each other: if you’re second, you cannot make history. We set ourselves quite bold targets. And most people—even within ING—tell me, well, don’t you think it’s a bit too ambitious? And to me, what matters is to have a big dream, like big, bold things, and have the courage to at least talk about it—and at least have the courage to try. And my experience is, when I try to problem-solve with amazing people who want to do big, bold things, they love to be in that team. So if you constantly put that challenge to yourself, but also to the table, and then care about people who put in that extra effort, people typically follow you. That’s at least what I’ve seen so far. We really focus on having high talent density. Why? Because good people bring good people.
Jeroen: It’s contagious.
Pinar: It is contagious. And when I was at Harvard, one of our professors—I remember—told us: at the end of the day, how you set culture is whom you hire and whom you fire. What you tolerate in your team and what you don’t tolerate—that’s exactly what sets the culture. And I’m a big believer in that. I will never tolerate behaviors like sharking. I always tell people: there are no sharks at ING. We probably do have some, but being collaborative, not talking behind each other’s backs, not lying—these are things that, no matter what you do—you can be a big scorer—but if you have certain behaviors, I will never tolerate it. And then people start to feel safe, because they know the rules of the game. So that’s a little bit, I think, what keeps great people. And I can tell you: many people really want to be in a winning team.
Jeroen: No, absolutely. And I’m just curious—you said you spend a lot of time speaking to people within the firm. What does a typical meeting look like? Are you the kind of person that speaks for quite a long time about how this person is doing, or do you get right to the matter and say, this is the dream, this is our purpose—where do you stand? Let’s say you’re traveling to Australia, meeting the country manager—or whatever you call them there—how does that typical meeting look for you?
Pinar: If I meet with the talents, especially in one-to-ones, I typically try to understand where they come from. Who are they? What did they do in their childhood? What brings them here? What is their dream? What dent do they want to leave in the universe, right? And then you try to understand—especially at senior management level—I take a bit of time to really understand what motivates this person. And that also gives me a good hint for what could potentially trigger this person negatively. Because then you see a bit more than just the big titles, the big jackets of a businessperson—who the person is. And then it helps me to see a bit more of the soul of the people in my team. And that typically brings a lot of trust in the team. So I try to understand who they are, why they do what they do, and what really excites them—that really matters to me. And then listen to them—what they face every day that they don’t like. Because these are typically amazing people, and they face obstacles.
So, for instance, I was in Australia in an amazing talent meeting, and we have an amazing bank there with a lot of different nationalities sitting around the table. And they all face obstacles, because we’re going through massive change. And just listening to this and now reflecting on: okay, what could we do differently, so we can actually remove obstacles for our amazing talent—so they can free up their amazing intellectual capacity to do more—that is my job. So that gives me quite a clue about the system: what works well, what doesn’t work well. But also, I think they appreciate me sharing—or allowing them to share—frustrations, right?
Jeroen: Are you demanding?
Pinar: I am.
Jeroen: Because if you want to win, you expect the team to do the most they can, right?
Pinar: I am demanding of myself and also of others—demanding in the sense that we need to do really well for our clients. I think our clients deserve a better experience. And if you get that purpose right—I’ll give you one example—making banking simple is very difficult. Very difficult. So I believe in putting in big effort to get big results. And then people actually self-select, because the type of people you typically have in your teams are the ones who really dream about achieving that. And they themselves also want to go the extra mile, because they want to be part of an amazing team.
Jeroen: Let’s move to another part—apart from people—the friction. And maybe combine that with the human side, because I could imagine, but please correct me if I’m wrong, that you get really annoyed if there’s friction for clients. And you’re in this meeting and you say, as you mentioned earlier, I’m using that app in detail. It’s not the only bank I use, but I do bank with ING, let’s be honest.
Pinar: I’m sure you also face friction.
Jeroen: No, I do sometimes—but do with every bank—so it’s not unique. But I could imagine that you get really annoyed when there is friction, or even worse, for example, when the app doesn’t work. You know, it happens with every financial institution once in a while. Is that true? Or is that a wrong assumption?
Pinar: Basically, if there’s one thing—retail is detail. Retail banking is detail. And you need to really think deeply to understand the sources of friction and solve for structures. I look at everything that happens—or sometimes goes wrong—as an opportunity for us to really step up our game. I love problem solving as a person. So when these things happen, you can easily find me with the person in charge, really problem solving: what is the structural cause of it?
For instance, our Head of Payments in this country—I think he is one of my biggest partners in problem solving, because payments touch everyday life. And of course, we both see a lot of things where we still need to do better. But it’s not always easy, and it’s quite a complex thing. I always say that payments are almost like a math problem. And oftentimes I find myself really thinking with him—okay, what is really causing this? And how can we rethink this whole thing?
And those are the moments I actually really love—that you work with a bunch of people who are capable of problem solving: how can we create a wow experience, right? Or onboarding a new client. I would like onboarding to happen almost with the blink of an eye. But it’s not happening yet with the blink of an eye, right? Because we have a lot of questions we need to ask, and people don’t always find that easy.
So how can we completely rethink that process so we can actually wow the experience? It’s not easy. If it were easy, all these banks would have done it. So when these things happen, I see it as an amazing opportunity. I get super excited.
Jeroen: But also frustrated, right? I mean, I could imagine that you want it to be fast. By the way, it works really well.
Pinar: It’s interesting, maybe because of my upbringing. And because I come from a more volatile, “everything can collapse” kind of environment. I’m pretty used to things going wrong. And I always look at it as: let’s just get into a room in front of a whiteboard to solve for it. I get a lot of joy out of solving things like that with teams.
Jeroen: So frustration is actually an opportunity always for you?
Pinar: I don’t really get very frustrated, but I really get excited if you solve it.
Jeroen: That’s great.
Pinar: It’s more like adrenaline jumps when things actually happen. And now you need to just move out of it to think of something bigger.
Jeroen: I love it. I really want to learn that, because when something doesn’t work on my website or in the process, I just get really annoyed.
Pinar: And when bad things happen — of course, you do have situations where you’re, as a large retail institution, you may have things where your site wouldn’t work — we also sometimes have issues with it. What I learned over time is that in those moments, I stay very calm. Like, probably my calmest moments are times when things really don’t work. Because at those moments, as a leader, you cannot create more stress — your team is already amazing, like they’re already stressed. So your role at those times is to really let them do their thing. And then afterwards, once we put things back into operations, then we get in front of the whiteboard and see: okay guys, let’s just look at what we could have done better. And that’s typically how I operate in very big incidents and moments. I always stay extremely calm.
Jeroen: Is that something you rationally designed to do, or does the calmness just happen to you?
Pinar: Look, I think it’s also, again, because of the context I was brought up in. Like, I was a CEO of a bank in Turkey where anything can happen — like three times a day. Sometimes ING at the time would send me letters to say: can you please stress test these scenarios? Like they would call it black swan scenarios. And I would read the letter and tell myself: well, that black swan scenario happened three times last week. So when you really operate in such an environment, you really learn to stay calm — because otherwise you will be dead. So these are the moments that, I think, probably because I experienced them so many times, that I almost feel like I’m at my best at those times — and allow teams and organizations to do something and step back.
Voice-over: This is Leaders in Finance with Jeroen Broekema.
Jeroen: Let’s switch gears a bit more towards you personally. In my preparation, I read a lot of things about you. One thing I wrote down—actually from a YouTube video—was: my grandfather would say, if you’re really smart, you start your own business. You don’t work for a company, you have to start your own business. If you’re not the smartest kid, you go to school. I love that quote. So, you know, you’re clearly someone that is very smart. That’s my wording, but given your CV and everything…
Pinar: Probably I was not the smartest in the family, so they sent me to school.
Jeroen: Exactly. Was that the reason? I mean, is this kind of semi-serious, or was this a very serious quote? Did it really go like that?
Pinar: I was born in Ankara, but if I trace back my family tree, which I did, it goes back almost 100 years to a town called Kayseri. There’s a specific province of Kayseri named Talas. This is basically a place at the crossroads of the old historical trade routes. It’s actually quite fascinating—if you look back through the Ottomans, Byzantines, Seljuks, Hittites—even if you trace deep into history, that town was on the road from China to the Mediterranean, right at the epicenter of trade routes.
So my family background comes from a big commerce center in the middle of Anatolia. And therefore, historically, many people in my family were known to be entrepreneurs. They did trading, they ran different businesses over the years. When you grow up with that for almost 100 years, the family upbringing becomes centered around trade—negotiations, buying, selling. You start doing it at a very early age, joining your father or grandfather. And if you’re not really capable of doing it, then maybe you should study something to gain that capability. It’s taken very seriously.
And of course, at those times, women were not given many opportunities. I have amazing women in my family, but not many of them were given the chance to pursue higher education or have a career. So I’m probably a bit of an exception in the family—the odd one—who always had an interest in entrepreneurship, in understanding trade, how it works.
I remember myself at 12 or 13 years old—my grandfather had a flour mill in the small town, with people working for him. He had this office where he would hold meetings with a lot of prominent people in the town, and I would just sit there for hours, watching. That’s what I loved to do. At the same time, I was also good at school. So at one point, I chose not to do anything with the family business. Probably, I was afraid that at some point someone would tell me, “Why don’t you just marry this great guy from a family we know?” Because in that province, arranged marriages were still common—not so much now, but in the past.
So that was probably my smart escape—to study and do my own thing. I was always a bit of a child who didn’t like rules much. I was really into playing football, and football wasn’t a girl’s thing. I remember my father telling me, “You shouldn’t play football—football is for men. And if you really want to play, maybe you should consider cutting your hair short.” My hair was very important to me. But I thought about it, and I remember telling my father, “I really want to play football.” I convinced all the girls on the street to play, too. And then he said, “Why don’t you cut your hair short like a boy? Because boys play football.”
So I have pictures of myself at 10 or 11 years old with super short hair, like a boy. That was almost my protest against my parents. Like, “If it requires me to cut my hair, I’ll cut my hair—but I’m going to play football.” And I was very happy with it.
I was always the kind of child who would try to do things, to convince the other girls on the street to do things that didn’t always follow the rules of the game.
When I graduated, I remember my father telling me, “Now that you’ve finished school, you have a choice. You can still start a company, help us build something. Are you really sure you want to go work somewhere and earn a salary? That’s just not a good idea. Are you really sure?”
And I was ranking first in my class, with excellent academic degrees. I said, “Yes, I’m pretty sure.” It was probably my statement of independence. I chose a completely different path, which was probably the harder one.
Sometimes, when I’m in a different place five times a week, I think back and wonder if I would have had a better lifestyle if I had chosen another route. But what I really enjoy is freedom. I love independence. And that’s probably why ING fits me—because if you look at our brand, we say we serve the freedom people. I myself am a freedom person, all the way back. And that’s basically how I ended up in this career track.
Jeroen: Could you share a bit more about how you were brought up, apart from what you just said? Because I’m just curious—what did your parents do? Was your dad indeed an entrepreneur? Did you have brothers and sisters and stuff like that? And was it religious?
Pinar: The province that my family comes from is actually quite an interesting area. Historically, it’s one of the places in my country with a big Christian heritage, a significant Armenian, Greek, and Jewish heritage. I actually visited this town two years ago with my brother. I have a brother. And you just cannot believe it—it’s literally on one street. And these are really narrow streets.
Jeroen: You’re talking about Kayseri?
Pinar: Yeah. It’s a town in Kayseri. These are really narrow streets. And I found our family home from like 100 years ago. It’s still there. It’s protected now. But these are stone houses, beautiful houses. On the same street, you could find a church, a synagogue, and a mosque. And it’s very rare in my country that, in such a small square meter of a street, you can actually find three religions. And my family, therefore, comes from roots of living together with Armenians, with Greeks, with Jewish people, with Christian people.
Actually, in this very small town, it’s very interesting—we have an American college. Because many years ago, in 1889, American missionaries came to this town because it’s a well-known trade route. And they wanted to establish an American college. It’s also now protected as a historical building. During World War I, they turned this college into a military hospital. And after the war, they reopened it as a school. So many people, also in my family but also in that town, are graduates of the American college. Imagine—this is like 100 years ago.
So my family, therefore, has a very strong upbringing in terms of tolerance to different cultures, tolerance to different religions. We lived in the same houses—like in the house we used to live in, you can find traces of two different backgrounds. Greek people probably lived there, because I can see it on the walls when I visit it. And now when I look back, people sometimes call me, “You’re like the chief cultural officer.” It’s probably because I grew up like that. I’m not a very religious person. I’m Muslim. I respect the religion, but I equally respect all cultures and all religions—and the same goes for my family. And that goes probably 100 years back.
I only understood this really well with my own eyes when I visited that street and saw it live. It’s so interesting, because you rarely find this in my country—rarely find this.
Jeroen: That’s great. I can imagine it helps you a lot in your current role.
Pinar: And my brother—I have a brother—and I was always interested in economics, and I was more the person in the family who was into math, science, economics, a numbers person. And he was the person who was more into social sciences, political sciences. And he’s still in Ankara. He actually serves the European Commission. He’s a political officer there. So both of us, I think, found an interesting career to probably reflect that identity that we both come from. I work for a European bank, he works for a European institution. It’s also a bit our upbringing. And also in my family, I remember, for instance, my parents, but also my grandparents, always had different nationalities, different religious people coming to our house. It was quite common not to be just surrounded by our type of people. So that’s how we were raised.
Jeroen: That’s great. As I said before, I think it helps you a lot in your current role as well, with all the different nationalities and backgrounds. And what exactly did your parents do for a living?
Pinar: My mom was a housewife. So she was encouraged to become a great mother and housewife. I’m sure if she had studied, she would have been very successful. My father, who passed away a couple of years ago, was doing a lot of trading of different things before.
Jeroen: Like the family history always did. That’s great how you described that. And I’m curious, did you have a person that was an example to you? Because ultimately you did go to study. You did go abroad. We’ll come to that later. But was there someone that you saw like, hey, he or she is doing it, I can do it? Or was it all on your own?
Pinar: No, I think my grandfather had a huge influence on me. This is the father of my mother. I don’t know why, but out of all the grandchildren, I was always the one who was picked by him to attend things with him. Like many people would play with toys and do other things on the street—and we would, at that time, play on the streets, there were a lot of people—but he would always invite me. And I wish I could speak to him to understand why, but I was always the one who was attending things with him at a very early age.
Jeroen: Like, for example?
Pinar: I don’t know, he would have a meeting with the mayor, he would take me with him. He would have…
Jeroen: Was it uncommon at the time to take a daughter—or a granddaughter in this case?
Pinar: Funny enough, he didn’t take his daughters. So that’s why I sometimes really— I mean, unfortunately, he passed away many years ago, but I sometimes really wish I could speak to him. Because when I look back, I found myself in these interesting situations at a very early age. So he was quite, like, probably he just wanted me to see things, but I don’t know why me. I really don’t know. And he was quite inspirational to me. A moment of reflection for me is when he died. We had a funeral, and I remember at that funeral, there were so many people attending. I was looking around and seeing all these people I had never met before, and they were all crying, showing respect and gratitude. And I told myself at the time that the best thing—unfortunately—that describes what you’ve done in life is your funeral and how people react when you die. I learned at that moment, and I told myself that I would like to die like him, that I want to leave behind people who actually think I left a mark on their lives and really, truly show gratitude to the person. So, he was probably my first family inspiration. He worked very hard. He always worked very hard until the moment he died. He was always the man of integrity. He was always the one who helped many others. No matter what happened, he was the one who stayed behind for the family. So, I think he has been my first inspiration, and I hope I can represent the values and integrity that he taught me early on in life. So, he’s a bit of my inspiration. When I look at other people who inspire me, there aren’t that many, but I always admire people like Steve Jobs because he’s very different— but I’ll tell you why. Part of me is a bit of a geek. I’m addicted to user experience and design, and I found him fascinating in how he made things simple and intuitive. He just didn’t tolerate complexity, and that comes back to my core belief: I really want to make banking simple. The way he was so passionate about making things easy, simple, and intuitive for people is something I get a lot of inspiration from. Also, he himself took the time to do it right. So many people sitting at the top of the house typically get detached from the product and product design, but I think he’s someone I get a lot of inspiration from. You can find the geek side of me in things like how I can easily test a user app in seconds and love doing it. I can find things that don’t work very quickly, and my team jokes about it, saying we have teams for that and I’m not supposed to do it. But to be honest, that’s our product, and the product needs to be perfect. So that’s the geek side of me, and I think I get inspiration from people like him.
Voice-over: This is the Leaders in Finance podcast with Jeroen Broekema.
Jeroen: When you arrived at Ankara University, was that a completely different world for you?
Pinar: My university is one of the first private universities. I attended there with a merit-based scholarship. When I first visited, I remember the first day. At that time, we didn’t have these kinds of universities in Turkey. So it was amazing—big campus, big library, sports facilities, amazing dorms. I remember my very first day, it almost felt like I walked into Disneyland. I was so, so—oh my God, is this really where I will study? And you know, nowadays, it feels very natural to my kids.
Jeroen: You felt privileged as well to be there? Or was it still something that was…?
Pinar: I felt extremely privileged. Because it’s funny now when I think about it. My parents now take their kids to visit schools, show them around, and help them with their decisions. At the time, my parents spent zero time with me thinking about my university education because they didn’t even think I should go. So I was studying for it on my own. And in Turkey, it’s very difficult to get into university. You have to take a national exam and you need to be in the top one percentile to get into these universities—it’s super competitive. So I studied like hell for a year to get into the school, but no one took me to visit it. I probably didn’t go myself either. I was probably naive at the time. So I had no role model, no one to help me. When I actually got the results, I remember asking my uncle to drive me to the school. And that very first day, I was like, “Oh my God, this is fascinating. How did I get here?”
Jeroen: Where did the motivation come from? What was the strong inner driver to be so competitive, to actually want to get in there, to study that hard, to ultimately graduate in the top, not even the top one percent, but the top zero-zero-one percent, and then also move on to McKinsey? Where does all the drive come from?
Pinar: I don’t know. I really don’t know. That’s a good question. I don’t know.
Jeroen: Maybe it has to do with your earlier quote—if you are second, you can make history. If you just want to show what you can do, and you want to, you know, be number one. I mean, I shouldn’t be answering my own question.
Pinar: There were a couple of things, maybe, that influenced that choice. Like, I just didn’t think it was right that all the women in my family were staying at home. That was a big driver for me. I just felt that it shouldn’t have been the case. Why men and not women? So that was something I wanted to change. That was a big inner drive, I guess. The second thing is probably that I just wanted to do something that wasn’t easily allowed. You may think it’s crazy because we’re talking about university education, but it wasn’t the norm. And, you know, like playing football or trying to organize these things with the girls on the street—those are the things I wanted to do, to test the boundaries. And you’ll ask me, “Where does that come from?” It’s probably because I also realized there were too many rules in the family. People were all following the rules. Like, “You’ll do your father’s job, you’ll live in this town, you’ll get married to someone close by, from the family, whom they know.” There were so many rules defined. And I probably watched all these rules, and something in me said, “Just break the rules.” So I think that inner voice of “Just break the rules, break the rules” got me there. And I had a mother—or I do have a mother, she’s still a caring mother—who always said, “Why don’t you try? I’m behind you.” So I think she probably didn’t have the courage to do what I did, but I had her encouragement and courage. And I had a few examples in the family who were doing things, and I just wanted to try. And I guess that’s it.
Jeroen: She kind of gave you the security, the safety net, you know, at least you can try it, in my words.
Pinar: Yeah, I think love matters, because if you don’t have a loving parent, maybe my life would have been more difficult. But that love and support from her has always given me at least that, you know, if I fall, there’s someone to pick me up. It’s a good safety net for a child. And I think that was probably very helpful for me to try.
Jeroen: How did you end up at McKinsey?
Pinar: I was going to do economics because I thought I should just do a PhD. I was a good student at school. One of my professors, an accounting professor, told me, “There is this firm called McKinsey, they’re coming to campus. They asked me, who are the good students here? And I gave your name, I hope you don’t mind. But why don’t you just attend their presentation?” To be honest, at the time, we didn’t even know McKinsey because McKinsey didn’t have an office in Turkey. So, at that time, consulting wasn’t well known. Most of the good students were basically encouraged by the school to go study in the U.S. I liked this teacher, so I said, “Okay, if you think so, I’ll just go see.” I attended the presentation. I remember there were about five men, no women there, and I found it fascinating. These people were telling us that they travel the world, they advise clients, they’d gone to really good schools in the U.S. I listened to them and then I thought, why not just meet them? I didn’t know that getting into McKinsey would be that difficult. I had no idea. I didn’t exactly understand what they were doing either. So, I suddenly found myself in interviews with them. They were recruiting five people for the first time from the country, five people. I was one of their first five. After about seven or eight hours of interviews in a hotel, I just liked the people I met. They gave me an offer, and then I changed my mind. I said, “Why not give it a try, see how it looks? I can always go into academics and apply after a year.” So, I started working there.
Jeroen: Must have been super exciting.
Pinar: It was super exciting. I also want to tell you something about the university. I think the university I attended was founded by a very visionary person in Turkey. It was the first private university. He’s also an amazing character. He created this university and had a program where he would offer scholarships to people like me, as well as others who couldn’t otherwise afford it. My family at the time probably also wouldn’t have been able to afford it. But he also created a program where people like me, who scored at a certain level on this exam, were placed in special classes. You can’t believe it, but I actually studied for three years in a class of six. And now that I think about the unit economics of those investments, it’s pretty crazy. But he put us in this special class, and we also received an amazing education. They were probably hoping I would go on to do a PhD and become a famous professor. They probably envisioned one day being proud of me as a big professor, which didn’t happen. But that also plays into this. Not only did they teach us much more than what a typical student would learn in undergrad, but we were also doing a lot of advanced academic work. For instance, this person would get the rector to invite us to dinners at his place, where we would receive diplomacy lessons. My first lesson in how to behave and how to set a formal dinner table was given by our rector’s wife. I find it very impressive that, at the age of 19 or 20, you’re invited to a class on diplomacy and formal dinner etiquette—what to do if you have formal guests and how to conduct yourself. Now, in my current role, I still think back and realize how amazing it is that they didn’t just teach us to be good students, but were almost preparing us for a completely different life. He would invite us to meet famous guests—like the governor of the central bank or a visiting foreign minister. A group of us would sit around the table, and he would tell us, “Guys, you need to learn how to behave at such a table. You need to prepare for it, and you need to understand how these things work.” I’d say it was pretty lucky that I ended up in an environment where these things were offered to me. I’m really thankful to these people who invested in us. So, that’s how I ended up with such an education—with the help of, I think, the right people and a bit of luck, at McKinsey.
Jeroen: Wow. You know, there are so many questions I could ask about this, but also about McKinsey. Let me just pick a couple, especially about your time at McKinsey, because you worked around the world with companies from all over the globe. Quickly, you did a lot in finance, right? Or were you always focused on finance, but at least at some point you started working with a lot of banks, right? How did that come about?
Pinar: I need to tell you that story as well. So, I started working in Istanbul for family businesses because we had a few large families, and they needed support. I began working with their own banks. Then, a year later—these were the days, 1997-1998, I graduated in 1998-99—I was at McKinsey. Remember, those were the days of the Silicon Valley boom, towards the end of it. There were all these things happening in Silicon Valley—startups, big booms—and something inside me was telling me that I had to end up there. But I didn’t know how. I thought of Silicon Valley as a big valley because I had never been there. I said to myself, I need to go there, but I didn’t know how to explain it to my parents. I had just moved to another city, and they were already making a big fuss about that. Now I needed to go to Silicon Valley. So I started reaching out to people in this office, introducing myself. I was nobody in Turkey—just a junior analyst—and these were big-shot tech partners in Silicon Valley. Somehow, one of them did a bit of due diligence on me, asking his partners who she was and why she was so eager to come. A year later, I got a call from them saying, “We’re actually going to offer you a job. You need to move in four weeks to the Silicon Valley office, and you’re going to help us out.” So I found myself, from Istanbul, from my hometown Kayseri, Ankara, and Istanbul, suddenly in the middle of the valley. I remember telling my mom, “Open the map, this is where it is. So I’m going there.” And I served for almost 12 to 18 months with tech companies. I worked in semiconductors. My first project was actually Wi-Fi chips. At that time, we didn’t have Wi-Fi. Remember the dial-up modems? My very first project was introducing Wi-Fi chips. I learned a lot and worked with a lot of engineers. I was the only non-engineer in that environment. After that tech experience, I said, “You know what, I just want to stay in the US. I want to go to Stanford because I was in Palo Alto, and Stanford was next door. It was my dream school.” I actually got into Stanford, but I was also in love with my current husband, who was going to New York. And I was lucky enough to also get into Harvard. So I said, “Okay, I’m moving to the East Coast because I can’t have this East Coast-West Coast relationship.” So, I ended up studying in Boston. Then I didn’t go back. I didn’t want to go back because he was in New York. So, I needed to continue my career in New York. I applied, but then the recession hit, and the economy started to perform poorly. I graduated in 2003, and McKinsey said, “We’re not going to recruit many people. So good luck, find yourself a job.” But, again, I think I was a bit lucky. I applied to the New York office and got an offer to attend the New York office of McKinsey. That’s how I started in banking. And that’s when I switched from tech to banking.
Jeroen: What did you like so much about banking? Because that’s where I wanted to move to—completely different from the tech scene, and then finance. And apparently, you loved it because otherwise, you wouldn’t be in it right now.
Pinar: I don’t think it was about the banking. I think it was because I had worked in technology, and I wanted to do something where, at some point, I could do things where tech could influence the consumer world. So, I started working in banks, mostly focusing on retail consumer-type banks because it was a big sector in New York. And that’s how I started.
Jeroen: Actually, maybe you still see it as a tech business primarily, or from a tech angle, a tech view?
Pinar: I always have a tech view. I actually tell people that my line of thinking always starts with what’s available in technology that we can actually use to ease people’s lives. And that’s quite in my DNA. That’s how I started in banking. And also, back to people: I always try to find the right people whom I can really work with. I met a couple of amazing people in the New York office at the time, who really inspired me and gave me the opportunity. Then I found myself working with amazing people, whom I’m still in touch with, by the way. So, it always comes back to the people. I never search for a job. I think I just search for something that will help me fulfill my curiosity and learning, with a bunch of good people. So, if you also look back at how I joined McKinsey, I just liked the people. How I joined New York? I found amazing people. They were inspiring. So, I joined them. People really matter to me – who I work for.
Jeroen: In the U.S., you apparently liked it a lot there. And by the way, I don’t think many people decline Stanford. I think only a small number do that and go to Harvard instead. What do you love, or like, so much about the U.S.? Let me phrase it like that.
Pinar: At that time, I liked the U.S. for a couple of reasons. One, you could be nobody and you could be anybody. Meaning, you could come from any background, have any identity, and at least at that time, you could become anyone. The upward mobility in the U.S. is pretty fascinating. If you’re passionate and want to do great things, the opportunity has always been there. I don’t think I would have found such great opportunities if I had stayed in my country. So, that’s what I liked. The second thing I liked was how big everything was. Everything was big: you’d touch a bank’s business in consumer, insurance, or retail space, and the portfolio was big. The market was big. When you move small things from here to there, the impact is big. I just fell in love with this. It’s big. Like, I was a junior analyst, don’t get me wrong, but you’d do something, then they’d take it, apply it, and you’d see it live for a lot of people. That was fascinating for me. I remember when a semiconductor company launched their Wi-Fi chips; they shipped them around the world. It was big. You’re a small person, a junior person, but you contribute to something that becomes big. That’s what I liked. The second thing is, I remember walking the streets of New York and going to the office every day. You’d see different skin colors, different backgrounds, different religions. Remember my history? I almost felt at home. There was so much richness in diversity, and that’s also something I strive for. Even now, in my teams, you’ll find all sorts of people. I think that’s something that makes me feel at home.
Jeroen: You’re the kind of person that I could ask 400 more questions easily, or a thousand for that matter, but I need to touch on a couple of things. One is the transition from McKinsey to ING. How did that come about?
Pinar: That’s a very funny story. Do you want me to tell it?
Jeroen: I would love to hear it.
Pinar: So, I basically got a call. First of all, why did I come back to Istanbul? Because I had my children, and of course, you struggle in New York as well. You need to raise kids, but you have no family support. My husband travels, I travel. Life was a bit off balance. And I really believe in being a good parent because I was raised by a good mother. So, I wanted to be a good mother too. I was really struggling with how to prioritize everything.
Jeroen: And you probably thought about the funeral story as well, right? You wanted to be a good person first and foremost, I guess, and not just work.
Pinar: That could have happened in the U.S. too. For me, that setup doesn’t matter. But I think the family situation was a bit more difficult for me. At that time, my country was booming—lots of foreign direct investment, a lot happening. And I got a call from a partner who basically said, “Why don’t you come over? We need a senior Turk who knows banking, and I need help. We need to build something. There’s nothing. We need to recruit people. There’s a lot of demand.” I said to my husband, “I really want to try it. It could also be good for the kids. They can see their grandparents. Why don’t I go?” He stayed in New York, and I moved to Turkey as an expat. It’s funny because I didn’t know if it would work out. So, I started doing this, and I just fell in love. We were recruiting, building, growing, and I could really have an impact on my own country with everything I had done before. A year later, we decided to move. And for the kids, this was amazing. Imagine they grow up in a family where there is a lot of attention. So, I said, “Let’s just do this now and see where it goes.”
I was actually advising one of the other international firms when ING bought a bank in Turkey. I was advising against buying it. Then, a couple of months later, I found out ING had made the acquisition. A few months after that, someone from the Netherlands called me saying, “We need a partner who can help ING. My client bought a bank. Why don’t you come help them?” I said, “OK, but how do I help them? I think what they bought is a bit difficult.” The guy said, “I know, but we need to help them.” My character is one that when things are difficult or when most people say it’s not possible, I want to take the challenge. I gave up my other clients because I couldn’t serve both ING and my other clients. I had to step down. So, I started helping the ING team who made the acquisition think about it. At that time, ING found itself in trouble, so many of their plans for the acquisition were put on the shelf, and they didn’t do much. But Turkey was booming. ING wasn’t in good shape, but Turkey was booming. They had bought an asset, but it wasn’t managed well.
Then, I was on maternity leave for my second child when I got a call saying someone from ING was visiting. “Why don’t you come and talk about what we can do?” I said, “Look, I’m on maternity leave, I can’t come.” The person insisted. I said, “Okay, I’ll come.” So, I went for a couple of hours to tell them: “You’ve made this acquisition, which probably wasn’t the best structure I would have thought. You’re not managing it well. And I see very few chances of you succeeding.” Then, I left to go back home. On the way back, I got a call saying, “We want you to join ING because it’s easy to criticize us. If you know so well, then come and run it.” And that’s how the discussion started. Initially, I wasn’t convinced, but it was a big honor. Of course, I was very young. I was 34 years old. I had never managed anything like this.
Jeroen: And this was the organization where you, as a strategy advisor, said, “Don’t buy it.”
Pinar: Not to ING, but to someone else. The origins of the bank are that it was established to serve the Turkish military forces. Therefore, we had branches across military zones to serve the military. ING, on the other hand, is a digital bank. So I thought, how would it work? How can you transform this bank into a digital bank? But after seven months, working with the team, they decided to go ahead with another candidate. The day before that candidate was going to the board, I received a call. They asked me, “Are you sure you don’t want to be a candidate?” I stayed up all night thinking, and I realized I would regret it if I didn’t accept. So, I called them in the morning saying, “Actually, I’m excited.” They told me, “Then you need to go through interviews.” I said, “What do you mean? You were chasing me! Why do I need to go through interviews?” They replied, “No, no, we have a process to follow.” And I failed the interviews. Basically, I couldn’t pass because I wasn’t a banker. Half of the board members who interviewed me probably weren’t comfortable with that. Then I thought, okay, now this is interesting. How could I fail? I said, “I need a second chance.” So, I think I’m one of the few people who actually got through the interviews after a second round. They gave me another chance with better preparation, and I passed. That’s how I got into ING. I became the CEO of this bank with 6,000 employees and 10 billion in assets.
Jeroen: It’s amazing, right? Especially at that age. But did the Turkish central bank or other supervisors also give clearance? You were good to go, right?
Pinar: The clearance process wasn’t easy. They put me through a special procedure because no one like me had been approved before. I remember the regulator telling me at the time, “We’ve approved you, but I’m going to watch you.” And you know what it means when a regulator says, “I’m going to watch you.” But, I made him proud afterward. We had a very good relationship with the regulator, and I’m very respectful to all the people who gave me the chance.
Jeroen: Was it much tougher than being a partner at McKinsey, being the CEO here?
Pinar: It was much tougher. After a year, I realized that I knew nothing—not in terms of banking, because you know, if you have good learning agility, you learn things. But what I realized after joining is that being a CEO involves so much more. It’s more about emotional intelligence. How do you motivate people who come from different backgrounds with different motivations? I almost felt like I needed another round of education in something I’d never experienced before. And you know what I did? I started working with a lot of leadership training. I put myself into many things that others would think were crazy. Like, we had team coaches, I had one-on-one coaches, mentors—I really invested in understanding human psychology. It was an eye-opening experience for me to discover the human side and the psychological side of the organization. Because you need to do so many things differently than at McKinsey to become a good CEO. It leveled me to almost ground zero after a year. I felt like I was doing well, but after 12 months, I realized I wasn’t good enough. I had to step back and reinvest in myself to really develop many other aspects, like what I now call “reading souls.” Like I mentioned before, trying to understand where people come from, what’s inside them, and what motivates them. That skill, I got acquainted with after I joined McKinsey, and I really invested in it.
Jeroen: Wow. Sounds like a very, very hardcore real-life MBA there, that first time.
Pinar: It actually was the most important part, because as you move up, you don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. You don’t need to solve every problem, although occasionally I enjoy it because I like it. But what matters at our level is how you inspire people, why people would want to follow you. Why would they want to work with you? Why? And that’s not a rational response—it’s a very emotional response. If you don’t build an emotional connection with people, they won’t follow you.
Jeroen: I couldn’t agree more with you on that. We have these five unusual questions with leaders in finance. I’ll pick a couple this time. First of all, what has been the scariest moment in your life?
Pinar: We had this big earthquake in Turkey a couple of years ago. The scariest moment in my life was that morning when I woke up, I was here in Amsterdam. I picked up my phone. I got a message from the CEO in Turkey saying, “We have an earthquake. The epicenter is in Maras.” Sorry. But Maras is an operation center I established. And I think the three minutes of me calling them to check if our people were alive was by far the scariest moment in my life.
Jeroen: Terrible.
Pinar: Sorry.
Jeroen: Take your time.
Pinar: I will never forget that. Because I was really instrumental in establishing that center. Luckily, that was the only building in the entire town that wasn’t destroyed. We built a very strong building, so that building became a shelter for many people in the town during the earthquake. But imagine, of course, that those very few minutes of trying to reach your team to figure out what happened to our people in that building were probably, for me, my scariest moment in life.
Jeroen: Hard even to imagine. Did everybody come out okay?
Pinar: Unfortunately, we lost a few colleagues, but not because they were in the building, they were at home. Unfortunately. But many of them are still alive, and we did everything we could to help the city and our people. Thousands of people slept in our building in the first few days. We turned it into a shelter. We arranged everything so that people could find a place to stay with their families. And I’m not just talking about our own employees, but everyone in the town. Luckily, ING had built a solid, earthquake-proof building that could save a lot of people at the time. But of course, these kinds of natural disasters, where you can’t do anything about it, and even if you’re prepared, it can hit you anywhere, are a big experience for a leader. How you coordinate around it, how you organize for it, and after those moments pass, you figure out, “Okay, we reached this many people. These are alive, and these are their family situations.” You also start running the bank in a couple of hours. Our entire operation was running out of that center. So, the rest of the story after my scariest moment is also about an amazing team in Turkey who put the bank back on track in a couple of hours. We were back up and running. But then thinking about what happens to these people, how do we help them, how can we get them out of the city, and what more can we do so they can return to their lives—this is, of course, a huge thing. But I’m very proud not only of how we dealt with it, but also how ING globally dealt with it. I think it says a lot about the culture, because all around the world, our colleagues helped us put our teams back on track, build schools, build buildings, and help families. I’m also very grateful, especially to the Netherlands and Dutch society, because in Europe, the Netherlands is one of the countries that provided us the most help on a voluntary basis. That also speaks to the history of the relationship between Turkish people and this country, and how people here really care about it.
Jeroen: Wow. What a story. Thanks for sharing. I’ll pick one other unusual question, which is completely different—a very hard turn—but you’re given 200 million euros today in your private account. It’s not in your business account, but in your private account. How would you spend it? Would you have to spend it within a few weeks, or would you do something else?
Pinar: I would spend it on girls’ education around the world, specifically for people who otherwise would not have access to education and opportunities. I would find the costs for it and spend it all on that.
Jeroen: Wow. Very clear, very to-the-point answer. And my last couple of questions. One is, we always ask our guests to share a book. Do you like reading, by the way?
Pinar: I do like reading, mostly books on psychology.
Jeroen: And do you have a title? Would you like to share something off the top of your head that we can add to the show notes? We’re collecting them from the 178 CEOs and board members we’ve interviewed, so we try to make the list longer. Do you have anything we can add?
Pinar: I think the book that probably shaped me the most is Brené Brown’s book. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her, but she scientifically studies vulnerability, and she has a book called Dare to Lead. Dare to Lead really shaped my own leadership style, and I highly recommend it. It talks about not only vulnerability and showing vulnerability but also courage. I think this is one of the few cases where someone with significant power can recognize that vulnerability is actually a strength if they have the courage to experience it.
Jeroen: Sorry, I do know her. I lived in Austin, Texas. She’s from there. I’ve seen her TEDx talks. And actually, this is exactly what you’ve done during this interview. So, it could have been a good moment to end, and we almost do. But there’s one last thing: we’ve asked every single CEO and board member—do you have one or a couple of tips for people just starting their careers, whether that’s in general or in finance?
Pinar: Two tips. One: do things that don’t come easy to you. Especially at a young age, get out of your comfort zone. Richness comes from experience, not from money. So try different experiences. The second thing is: hire good leaders to work for. And I say hire because it’s similar to hiring—you need to find the right people. So, you need to find the right leader, and quit jobs quickly when you don’t think you’re working for the right leader, because who you work with matters.
Jeroen: Wow.Wonderful. Thank you so much, Pinar, for taking the time to speak to Leaders in Finance, to speak to me. I really enjoyed this conversation. And I want to repeat what I said earlier during this discussion, which is that you’re the kind of person I feel we only touched on maybe 10% of the interview. I wanted to ask 90% more things and, you know, maybe we’ll get a second chance for a follow-up conversation. You’re still very young, so I’ll be following your career. One of the questions I would have asked then is obviously, where will you be in the long run? But we’ll keep that for the second one. I’m trying to invite myself here. But for now, I’ll leave it here. And again, Pinar Abay, member of the Management Board at ING, thank you so much for taking the time. I have a small gift for you to thank you for the time you’ve put into this interview. And once again, thank you for being vulnerable, as Brené Brown said in her book.
Pinar: Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Yeah, looking forward.
Jeroen: Thank you.
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