Banking on Success Rainer Schnabl on Technology & Regional Opportunities in Banking

Having led teams in Austria, across Central Europe, and in the Western Balkans, Schnabl is well-positioned to speak to the cultural dimensions of leadership. His view is clear: Effective leadership must be adaptive. Different markets bring different team capabilities, different levels of market maturity, and different cultural expectations around management style.

"It takes time for colleagues to adapt to your way of leading, and for you to get to know them," he says. "This is how you create a new leadership style."

This adaptability, he argues, is one of the most valuable assets a senior leader can develop — and one that desk-based analysis alone cannot provide.

One of the more pointed observations Schnabl offers concerns the persistent misperception of CE and SE European markets among Western European peers. He pushes back firmly against any notion of regional backwardness.

Markets such as Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania have demonstrated consistent GDP growth even as Western European economies have struggled. Further south, countries like Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia are attracting meaningful foreign investment and advancing economically at a pace that belies outdated assumptions.

Schnabl attributes lingering skepticism partly to historical memory — the conflicts of the 1990s remain vivid for a generation now in senior decision-making roles. But he is optimistic. With Montenegro and Albania potentially joining the European Union within two to three years, he sees a potential inflection point: "If one of these countries achieves to join the European Union, it could have a very positive impact on the ambitions of the others."

Schnabl is equally direct about RBI's competitive position. The bank's deep regional footprint — spanning CE, SE Europe, and extending to markets such as Uzbekistan — represents a strategic asset that he believes is sometimes underestimated internally.

"We can be of huge value because we manage the complexity for clients," he says. For international investors — whether from the US, UK, Europe, or increasingly China — navigating smaller, fragmented markets requires exactly the kind of local expertise and relationship infrastructure that RBI has built over decades. Chinese companies, for example, are not only selling goods in the region but building production facilities and investing in renewable energy. RBI's ability to bridge those investors to local markets is, in Schnabl's view, a differentiator that deserves greater recognition.

On the risk landscape, Schnabl acknowledges that clients have been operating in a near-continuous state of crisis since 2020 — COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have all disrupted supply chains and market access. Yet his perspective remains constructive.

"Each crisis also offers opportunity," he says. Nearshoring trends are benefiting several CE countries as European companies reassess supply chain resilience. And looking further ahead, Schnabl sees RBI playing a meaningful role in the eventual reconstruction of Ukraine — contributing real value to a country, its corporate clients, and its financial institutions.

Schnabl is clear-eyed about where wholesale banking is heading. Blockchain, tokenization, and artificial intelligence are not distant possibilities — they are near-term priorities. In trade finance, AI-assisted processes can accelerate decision-making, reduce manual workloads, and improve fraud detection. Tokenization has the potential to open lending and capital markets participation beyond the traditional banking monopoly.

His investment thesis for the next five years centers on technology — not as a replacement for human relationships, but as an enabler of faster, simpler, and more reliable client service. "Whatever we have on the technology side, it also needs to be implemented," he notes. "This is why I'm confident for our business — technology-driven assisted products."

The lesson from retail banking is instructive: Disruption, when it comes, moves fast. Wholesale banking should not wait to find out.

Asked how he stays connected to market realities from a group board position, Schnabl's answer is unambiguous: Get on the ground. Visiting network banks, meeting clients directly, engaging with regulators, and building relationships with supranational institutions are core to the role.

"It's not my understanding of a group function to sit in Vienna and wait for reports," he says. "My understanding is to go there and not to be visited."

It is a philosophy that has served him well across three decades — and one that will likely define his tenure at Raiffeisen Bank International.