I joined our business in Romania more than 12 years ago, in 2009, as an internal auditor, and the first thing that I remember about the organisation is that it had a clear purpose of helping people in difficulty. My induction involved two weeks of field shadowing with a business relationship manager and while during the two weeks I was going back home everyday exhausted from the customer visits, at the end of that period I was really surprised to realise that, in the entire period, I felt we were helping people who needed cash very fast rather than selling loans. I had even checked the numbers, performance of that manager, and realised she was a star, but there was no feeling of aggressive selling in her approach. I felt proud for being part of the organisation.

And then, along the years, many other things about the characteristics, culture and even DNA of the organisation were revealed and made a good link to me. I will only mention two more. The people in the organisation are really great. And I am not referring here just at them being nice, kind, willing to help. I refer here to the professional competence. I work now in enterprise risk management and I am very close to how our people and leaders react in unusual situations, high uncertainty and significant external disruption. And our people are just fantastic, they find ways to tackle any situation, above any manuals or policies.

And the last one, more personal to me, is that in IPF you are allowed, supported and encouraged to grow professionally. In the 12 years I was offered manager roles, then regional roles and the last one, a Group role. I was offered the regional internal audit manager role when I was pregnant with my daughter, this personal aspect was never discussed as a stopper. And then, when I finally opened up about my life-time objective to move to the UK, the entire approval process took 12 days and here I am, in the UK.