Why do you work at Traxpay?
After more than 30 years in a financial group, the challenge of working for a start-up appealed to me. There are short decision-making paths here and the opportunity to help shape the company. Markus Rupprecht and I met at the end of the 90s at Deutsche Bank in Munich and met again in 2017. When he offered me to join Traxpay, I jumped at the chance to try something new.
Does the job make you really happy?
Happiness is one of those things. For me, happiness is not just the job, but depends on several factors. I like working with people who are now much younger than me and have a completely different background. What I do has a visible impact and I can apply my experience from my previous jobs. So I see that I can contribute something to the success of Traxpay and I am proud of the things we have achieved at Traxpay.
How will compliance requirements change in the future?
As Traxpay is slowly “growing up” and leaving the field of a start-up, the compliance requirements are also growing. Banks in particular are obliged to place high demands on their partners and suppliers, especially with regard to IT security and stability of processes. Otherwise, they would not meet their regulatory requirements, e.g. for risk management (MaRisk) or IT (BAIT). As the requirements continue to increase in the future, so do the demands on Traxpay. Meeting compliance requirements means costs or investments that do not immediately generate additional revenue. The challenge here is to prioritize the measures correctly and to find the balance between costs and benefits.
What is at the top of your agenda?
Continuing to create awareness that compliance is an important competitive factor, even if this means that I am sometimes the “party pooper”. It is also important to me to safeguard what has already been achieved and to further establish it in our operations, e.g., our Information Security Management System. And, of course, to continue working to ensure that we meet the banks’ requirements in terms of security.
What would you do differently in your professional life today?
Many framework conditions and priorities have changed in the almost 40 years of my professional career, and with them the opportunities to do things differently today. For example, I would pay more attention to work-life balance in my career from the very beginning and spend more time with my family. That has become a priority in recent years and is possible with home office. For many years I drove from Munich to Frankfurt on Sunday evening and back again on Friday evening. I would question that more critically today. Otherwise, there is not much I would change. It was always important to me to keep a mental independence and not to let my job become the meaning of my life. Therefore, the job alone would not make me happy.
