After the news of the departure a few weeks ago Philipp Pohlmanns surprised, the French Neo-Bank Qonto initially no country manager on the hotly contested German market. The French had only opened their branch in Berlin a good half year ago. Pohlmann wanted to devote himself to his own projects, they said.
Now the vacant position has been filled again. Torben Rabe is now responsible for Qonto as Country Manager and is allowed to get involved in the controversial neobank market from today on. Once again, Qonto is relying on a manager from a foreign industry, similar to his predecessor. Most recently, Rabe worked for Bird, where he led the operational development of the DACH business.
The German team is to be further expanded
According to Payment and Banking, Rabe intends to work strategically on bringing a full-online product to its B2B target customers. To this end, the German team is to be expanded first. Not least also in order to make the Qonto product better known throughout Germany. For foreign neo-banks, Germany is regarded as a a hotly contested market with a high density of competition.
In this country, Qonto was launched at the beginning of the year. Already successful in France, the neo-bank offers a range of products for small and medium-sized companies. “SMEs deserve to have a strong partner for financial management at their side so that they can focus entirely on strategic decisions,” says Rabe.
Well-known investors have already liked this approach: Hedosophia and later also Tencent recently invested 100 million euros in the expansion. Germany represents an important market.
Target: 30 percent of customers should come from Germany
“We want founders to represent 30 percent of our new customers in Germany Since October 2020, founders have been able to deposit their share capital with Qonto and thus start their business. This goal is particularly important to me personally and is in line with the successes we are seeing in our other European markets”, Rabe told Payment & Banking.
To achieve this goal, the new Country Manager still has a long way to go. Although the French speak of well over 100,000 customers worldwide, the company remains silent about the figures in Germany. Before leaving, Pohlmann spoke of several thousand.
But the new manager is optimistic: “Qonto wants to be the European leader in financial management”, Rabe continues, “my central task will be to develop solutions for the German market and to take into account the special features of this environment”.
