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If you’re pursuing a career in financial services, Dennis Bon is a strong candidate to model yourself on. Dennis is Head of Securities Services Americas at BNP Paribas, holding positions at JPMorgan and ABN AMRO prior to that.
We sat down with Dennis recently to reflect on the decisions he’s made throughout his career, the advice he’d give to people earlier on in theirs, and where he thinks the industry is going next.
Did you always have a ‘grand plan’ for your career?
No is the short answer. But what Dennis did have were three principles that he thinks have served him well:
- A constant desire for learning and change
Every 3-5 years, Dennis finds himself doing something different - usually coming with fresh challenges and more responsibilities. - An appetite for risk
The first principle necessitates this one, really. Dennis moved across cities and continents - from Toronto to Amsterdam, London, Paris, and New York - which took courage and a willingness to start anew. - Trust your gut
Finance attracts a lot of analytical people. But Dennis believes that following your instincts is also super important - it’s OK for some decisions to be emotional, because people are emotional by nature and you should account for that.
Not all moves are up - you should consider moving laterally. People often envisage a ladder in terms of position, power, promotion, prestige. But often moving sideways will help you move up faster in the long term.
What does good leadership look like?
Stepping into a new role, it can be easy to focus on business-as-usual - but good leaders find ways to go beyond that.
Step in, create a clear and compelling vision and strategy for the activity yourself or the business, and use that to frame everything you do - 1:1 with your boss, presentations to your board, etc. Make that narrative clear for everyone so that over time, it becomes second nature and they understand the change you’re driving.
Good leadership also means sometimes taking very tough decisions. As Jamie Dimon once said, sometimes you can end up in a position where long-tenured employees are no longer adding value - a good leader must be able to make tough calls to benefit the broader organization.
Navigating technological change
Technology is at the core of BNP Paribas’s securities services platform - it manages trillions in assets across 400+ platforms.
Dennis’s technology strategy revolves around:
- Efficiency, stability, scalability
Growth has been in the double digits for the past few years, which necessitates technology that can keep up. - Client-centric data delivery
There’s a strong focus on improving delivery and adding value for clients with data - the team have developed a whole set of products and services around it. - AI and automation
BNP Paribas is already making liberal use of technology like robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning to make efficiency gains across the business - with use cases like transaction surveillance, customer service, and news article scanning.
2030 strategic plan - agentic AI in the crosshair
While Dennis notes that there’s yet to be real transformation to BNP Paribas’s core operations with AI, it’s central to their 2030 strategic plan. They’re investing now so they’re ready when true transformation hits - even taking steps like developing in-house LLMs.
Where does he think that real transformation will come from? Agents.
I'll be frank, we haven't had anything really impact the core of the business yet. But it would really be a game changer from an efficiency perspective - and we expect it to happen. And it’ll come from leveraging agentic AI, that Pigment is obviously very familiar with, as well as other new use cases.
These next few years are going to be pivotal, with a lot of time and money being spent in the area.
The number one rule for success with AI implementations is to start with a problem - don’t go searching for one. AI for the sake of AI is not a good idea, because it’s a significant investment of time and resource.
Next steps
To view the full webinar session this article is based on, click here.
