What’s next for retail banking at RBI?

Since September 2026, Curt Chadha has been heading Group Retail Banking at Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI). He brings extensive experience in banking, payments, digital innovation and business development. In this interview, he discusses his priorities in the new role, the opportunities of digitalisation and how closer collaboration across RBI can strengthen the retail business.

At the center of my work are our customers and the relationships we build with them. My priority is to understand their needs and focus on the initiatives that create tangible value for them. To do that, we need to bring together the expertise we have across RBI, set clear priorities and execute them effectively. Digital innovation, closer collaboration across the Group and relevant products, services and partnerships are important parts of that agenda.

I bring experience from banking, payments, digital innovation and business development. My approach combines ambition with practicality. I believe strong decisions are based on facts but also require a clear understanding of what customers need. In a diverse banking group like RBI, this also means bringing together expertise from different markets and turning it into solutions that deliver tangible value for customers. Thinking as one group where it matters most for our business will be an approach I bring and firmly believe in.

Our focus is on acquiring customers digitally, engaging them through mobile channels and enabling more digital sales of relevant banking products. Ultimately, these capabilities have to translate into better customer experiences and tangible value for customers – I’m happy to say here we are already performing above the market and have a great foundation to build on. For me, technology is most relevant when it helps us understand and serve customer needs better and makes banking simpler and more convenient – using it to engage more deeply with customers will be essential.

RBI has extensive expertise across its Network Banks and Austrian portfolios. Closer collaboration allows us to bring together this knowledge, align priorities and learn from approaches that work well in individual markets. At the same time, the implementation must reflect customer needs, local infrastructure, regulation and other market-specific requirements. The objective is not uniformity for its own sake. It is to use our scale and shared expertise where this creates clear value and here we need to think as one group, while retaining the flexibility required in each market.

Payments are among the most frequent interactions customers have with their bank and are therefore central to customer engagement in their everyday lives. Customers expect them to be simple, secure and transparent. They also compare their payment experience with digital services outside the banking sector and rightly so. We therefore need to improve payment journeys, provide greater choice and make it easier for customers to use the payment option that best meets their needs. Customer adoption is the ultimate measure of whether we have succeeded.

Digital customer acquisition, mobile engagement and a high-quality experience in sales will remain important priorities. We also need to make better use of the expertise and capabilities available across RBI and convert innovation into solutions that customers use. We will continue to work with our flywheel concept “Acquire-Engage-Monetize”, continuing to emphasize the importance of a growing, very active customer base. We will assess how we can improve in all areas of the model, see how AI platforms like RAIA can help us interact with our customers and put an increased focus on empowering customers to grow their wealth. Ensuring we have the right solutions in place as a group for SMEs, which represent a core pillar of our economic growth in the region, will be very important going forward.