Personnel Group: Other Key Officers

Ivo has more than 20 years’ experience in the finance services sector, with a focus on mortgage business. After getting his Master in Finance from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, he started his career as a consultant working on structured finance transactions in the Netherlands and abroad. From 2007 to 2011, Ivo worked in London as a credit rating analyst at one of the major global credit rating agencies, where he was responsible for rating financial instruments backed by Dutch mortgage portfolios. At the end of 2011 he rejoined as a consultant at the Big Four where he worked earlier, to advise financial institutions and companies in the Dutch mortgages sector on corporate finance and valuations, mortgage business strategy and market entries. In February 2021, Ivo joined MeDirect Belgium, where is responsible for the Dutch Mortgages business.

Thomas has close to 20 years experience in the financial services sector.  After getting his Master in Business Engineering from the Solvay Business School, he started his career in the mortgage loan origination activity. He then moved on to become a project manager at AXA Belgium where he delivered Six Sigma projects for various departments. Thomas then became a consultant, first for IBM then for EY, performing various projects for almost all major banks in Belgium. As a consultant, he helped build the new online mortgage loan offering of Keytrade Bank and subsequently joined the latter as Credit Product Manager. His role quickly evolved to Head of Product Management. Thomas joined MeDirect Belgium in November 2021.

Michal joined the MeDirect group in 2017. He has 13 years of banking experience gained at HSBC, RBS and MeDirect. Throughout the years, he has held various roles in corporate banking, finance, change management, treasury and ALM. Michal is CFA Charterholder and member of CFA Society in Belgium and Poland. He holds a Master’s degree in Finance and Banking from the University of Warsaw.

Steven De Backer joined MeDirect as of June 2022. He previously was the Head of Communication and Activation at Keytrade Bank. He started his marketing career in the FMCG sector working for Unilever and Alken-Maes and then broadened his marketing scope with commercial Key Account responsibilities at De Persgroep. Steven holds a Master in law from Ghent University and an MBA from Vlerick Management School.

Kim Van de Velden started her career as a lawyer by working for international law firms. She also worked as a tax consultant for the Big Four and has over 15 years of experience in providing advice and assisting (financial services) companies with their legal and tax affairs. She has acquired extensive knowledge in M&A transactions and litigation. 

She holds a Master’s in law (LLM) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and a Master in Tax Management from the Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Management. She is also a guest lecturer in tax law at the Louvain School of Management (LSM) since 2020 and a teaching assistant at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) since 2012.  

She is an accredited in-house counsel and member of the Belgian Institute of in-house counsels (IBJ-IJE).

Bruno Ceysens joined MeDirect in 2020 but started his career in the financial industry in 2002 joining Kredietbank Luxembourg (now Quintet Private Banking) in Monaco as junior portfolio manager. He then joined Dexia Asset Management (now Candriam) in 2004 before working for Accenture on the implementation of MiFID I in the Private Banking department of a major Belgian bank. After spending more than 3 years in a “wealth management boutique” in Luxembourg (Qualion Finance), Bruno joined Bank Degroof (now Bank Degroof Petercam) in 2011 as member of the Compliance Department where he has acquired extensive experience in all areas of Compliance while being a central contact point for the regulators. Bruno holds a Degree in economics of the Catholic University of Louvain, has completed all three levels of the CFA and successfully passed the Febelfin Certified Compliance Officer exam.

Isabelle has been working in the banking industry for the last 23 years. She started her career in 1999 and spent 13 years within the Dexia Group, first within Dexia Bank and then within the Holding company. She has held various operational functions and throughout her different roles, has gained broad managerial experience. She then joined the Group Internal Audit function where she gained international experience as Internal Auditor, auditing a wide-range of operational and strategic processes. She later took on the management of a part of the Internal Audit team within the Bank, focused on Retail and Commercial Banking. From 2010 to 2012, she spent couple of years at Group Strategic Planning and Control as Head of Cost and Project Control before joining Triodos Bank as Internal Auditor, responsible for the Belgian Branch. As part of an integrated Audit Function, she participated in a number of international assignments as well. Between 2016 and 2021, she joined the Business Lending department and managed the Business Banking Operations team, mainly in charge of process improvements, projects and Credit administration. Isabelle joined MeDirect Bank SA in February 2022 as Head of Internal Audit (pending regulatory approval).