Tailored financing for "everything that floats"
After studying Business Administration and holding a few professional posts in industry and the services sector both within Germany and abroad, my career path led me to a bank in 2007. I first had contact with KfW IPEX-Bank a few years later, within the context of joint syndicate financing for companies in the energy industry. It didn't take me long to notice that dealings among the KfW IPEX-Bank colleagues were very much characterised by a flat hierarchy, a high degree of dynamism and a lively discussion culture. That's one thing that I liked right from the outset. "If I was ever to apply to another bank," I told myself, "then KfW IPEX-Bank would be top of my list."
When I finally got the opportunity to switch to KfW IPEX-Bank in 2012, I grabbed it. I've been working as a Project Manager in the Maritime Industries department since then.
We structure and arrange tailored financing for "everything that floats", including wind turbine installation vessels, tankers, container ships, offshore vessels, cruise ships and ferries, to name but a few.
My work is constantly characterised by close customer contact, a great deal of cooperation with internal interfaces and new structuring requirements. I'm given plenty of personal responsibility. KfW IPEX-Bank really does place a considerable amount of confidence in its employees' skills, judgment and self-organisation. At the same time, managers live and breathe an open-door policy.
KfW IPEX-Bank's strong customer focus means that employees are regularly sent off on business trips. You get a far deeper understanding of companies, projects and customer requirements if you don't just stay at your desk. I've always wanted to work in an international project and customer environment. KfW IPEX-Bank attaches a great deal of importance to employees who have international experience and are willing to travel – especially in project management. In my everyday work, taking this approach has enriched me in two ways: Through my own business trips and through my dealings with colleagues who, thanks partly to their inter-cultural experience, have learned to "think outside the box".
I'm really proud to work for an employer that shoulders responsibility, in terms of both the environment and society. This is very much reflected in the core tasks undertaken by our parent company, KfW. They include environmental protection and animal welfare, development aid and general promotion with respect to social "megatrends". Above and beyond this, the KfW Group encourages its employees to do voluntary work. It doesn't consider doing this as a conflict of goals, but rather views it in terms of enrichment, and this helps me to align my personal values with the bank's and to identify with my employer even more.
KfW IPEX-Bank even takes responsibility in its own little microcosm. It offers its employees comprehensive social benefits, such as an extensive range of breakfast and lunch options, company sports groups, well-equipped coffee kitchens, changing and shower rooms, flexible working hours and more besides. It feels good working for an employer that really does care about its staff and takes a responsible and sustainable approach towards them. For instance, the fact that I can go jogging on my lunch break since there are company shower rooms provided, means that I become a more balanced and effective individual.
Looking towards the future from where I'm standing right now, I can honestly see myself spending many more years with KfW IPEX-Bank and the KfW Group. The range of employment opportunities and tasks is very diverse and the practice of staff switching roles internally is explicitly supported. Without doubt, I can say that you'll be hard pushed in the KfW Group to find an employee who has spent the last 20 years in the same role.
