As one of quirion's first employees, Stefan Hubert played a decisive role in setting up and growing our digital asset management. Today the IT Business Analyst ensures, among other things, that important information is available quickly.
Personally advising customers at a bank, programming software for a robo-advisor: finding both of these professional experiences in a single CV is rather rare. With Stefan Hubert, though, you do.
Our IT Business Analyst took his first step into working life in 1998 with an apprenticeship as a bank clerk. He wasn't the first in his family to do so. "My grandmother and my sister had already gone down this path," Hubert recounts. He was interested in numbers and business from an early age.
But numbers weren't the only thing Hubert had a fondness for; he also had a passion for the technical side. And that inclination gained the upper hand after his apprenticeship. In 2000, he began studying computer science, later supplemented by business administration as a minor.
Between bank and university
But even during this time, Hubert never fully let go of banking topics. He commuted between the two expert worlds. Alongside his studies, he worked one day a week at a branch of Berliner Volksbank. "I was deployed as a floater across various service areas and had a lot of personal contact with customers."
When word got around at his employer's headquarters that there was someone who not only understood the banking business but also computer science, his student job changed. He became an IT administrator. Right after graduating in 2007, he took up a position as an IT application manager at Berliner Volksbank.
The first line of code for quirion
About two years later, he then became an IT Business Analyst at Quirin Privatbank, quirion's parent company. An IT Business Analyst identifies and formulates requirements for processes and IT systems. In doing so, he keeps an eye on the interests of both the company and its users. With his know-how, he connects different areas of expertise and, where necessary, mediates between multiple departments or external service providers. "Traveling between expert worlds" is practically built into the job profile.
And such skills were especially in demand at quirion in April 2014. Back then, quirion, as a brand of Quirin Privatbank, was only a few months old. "When I started there, I was the second full-time employee, plus there were two student assistants," Hubert recalls. "The first line of code ever written for quirion came from me." His job, especially in the early days, wasn't limited to his role as an IT Business Analyst, though. "I talked with customers, helped out in marketing – and much more." Hubert's broad training was a great asset to quirion in this.
From growth to specialization
With the rapid growth of the digital asset management, the team and the degree of specialization grew as well. Hubert was able to focus more strongly on IT tasks again. This also included taking on programming work himself – both for the "frontend," that is, what users see on the web and in the app, and for the "backend," that is, the IT structure that works in the background to make sure the applications function.
The advantage of taking such work into your own hands: more flexibility. "That way, we could bring new offerings to life much faster." One early milestone, for example, was the introduction of savings plans in 2015. "Our ETF savings plan goes far beyond a simple product-based savings plan," Hubert explains. "With every savings installment, it includes the services of professional asset management, starting from an investment amount of just €25."
Providing relevant information
Currently, the 46-year-old handles, among other things, day-to-day operations and, together with his colleagues, ensures that all applications run properly. This includes making sure that customers can always retrieve the relevant information in their account. Beyond that, Hubert is currently in the process of filling what's known as a "data lake." "In principle, it's about a very large amount of different data, which is then available internally for all kinds of analyses." His tasks have changed over the years, but his passion for the job has remained. "I really enjoy working here; quirion is like my own child to me – at least that's how it feels," he says.
quirion turned 11 last year. Hubert's daughter is now 16. Doing something with the family, for example at a nearby horse farm: that provides a bit of distance from the screen work of everyday life on the weekend. In his free time, he also likes to take care of his own house. "There's really always something to do there." When the house was built a few years ago, Hubert planned much of it himself. "As a techie, I really wanted a 'smart home' and was the unofficial architect," Hubert recounts. Connecting the tech world with other areas of expertise so that something as useful as possible comes out of it in the end – in cases like these, Hubert is simply in his element.
