Camille Vauquenard · Chief Human Resources Officer · Europe

What I would bring to a remuneration committee

My contribution to a board

I would bring a working knowledge of how pay, consultation and workforce planning operate inside a supervised European financial institution. For a remuneration committee, that means experience of identifying staff whose work can affect the risk profile, designing deferral and malus that managers understand, and applying malus when the facts required it, including the resignation that followed. For a nomination committee, it means an employer's view of suitability, competence records and succession for key functions. I can also help a board judge whether a reorganisation has been consulted on in substance: whether employee representatives saw the data they needed, whether individual consequences were mapped, and whether the timetable was chosen for the people or only for the budget. My limits are clear to me. I have not managed a lending book, an investment portfolio or a customer business, and I have not yet held a seat on a regulated board. I would contribute alongside directors who have.

Judgement in practice

Recommending malus knowing it would cost us a desk head

The cross-border suitability case is the clearest example of a decision I would expect to face again on a remuneration committee. The facts supported malus, but those best placed to argue against it had good points: the business would lose a strong manager, and the bank's own documentation had failed. I separated the two. The managers who set volume objectives and approved the files lost their unvested deferred pay; the advisers, who had been handed French forms for German-speaking customers, were retrained rather than penalised. On another board I would ask the same questions. Who had the authority to stop the problem? What did the institution fail to provide? Has the malus provision ever been explained with a worked example? I would also ask management to state the likely retention consequence in the paper itself, so that the committee decides with that cost in view rather than discovering it afterwards.

Delaying an automation project so that it could be consulted on properly

In 2025 our operations director wanted to introduce document-reading software in the credit operations centre, where 186 people check mortgage and consumer-loan files. The CSE exercised its right to an independent expert's report on the effects of the new technology, which pushed the start back by five months. I supported the request although the project sponsor saw only delay. The report identified a workload risk we had missed: the remaining manual checks would be the hardest cases, concentrated on fewer people. We changed the staffing plan, agreed that the tool's throughput data would stay out of individual appraisals and decided which 38 vacancies would remain unfilled over three years. A board reviewing a similar project should ask how employee representatives were consulted, what the tool will measure about individuals, and which jobs will change before the savings appear in the forecast.

My first year on a board

In the first months I would read the remuneration policy, the last two identification exercises for risk-taking staff and the minutes of the committee I had joined, then ask the HR director to take me through one recent pay decision from proposal to payment. With management's agreement, I would meet the secretary of the employee representatives' body, because their view of how consultation really works is information a board rarely hears directly. I would visit one operational site where change is under way. By the second committee cycle I would want to understand how the company tests whether its incentives reward the conduct it intends, and how it would evidence that to a supervisor. I would speak sparingly in my first two meetings and ask the chair afterwards whether my questions had been useful. By the end of the year I hope to have contributed to one substantive policy decision rather than to many small comments.

Conflicts and their management

My executive role creates two kinds of conflict. The first is competitive. Our bank competes for deposits, loans and staff across north-eastern France and the Luxembourg border, so I would not join another retail bank operating in those markets, and I would decline any role with a company that sells our network services I help to buy, such as payroll, training or employee benefits. The second concerns information. I see our pay data, negotiating positions and individual employee cases, and none of that can travel to another boardroom. Before accepting, I would list my interests for the chair and company secretary, ask our own nomination committee to review the appointment and record any matter from which I should withdraw. If the company is supervised, its regulator will assess my suitability, and the time I offer will be weighed against the directorship limits that apply to board members of larger institutions.

My independence statement

I am employed by Banque Ardevrange and expect to remain so, which means I could never be independent of it or of the companies it controls or depends on. For any other company, I would disclose my relationships in full and leave the assessment of my independence to its board, under whichever governance code applies to it, such as the AFEP-MEDEF code for a listed French issuer.

Committee contribution

Chair and member readiness
Capacity	Committees
Ready to join	Remuneration · Nomination and governance

Capacity and preferences

Time available: 20 days per year
Current directorships: 1
Sectors: Mutual and cooperative insurance · Payments and specialist lending · Fund administration and asset servicing
Company type: Member-owned or privately held European financial-services company with a functioning remuneration committee
Company stage: Reorganising its workforce, its pay structure or its operating model

The seat I am pursuing

I am pursuing a first regulated board seat as a member of a remuneration or nomination committee in a European financial-services company that is changing how its people work: a mutual insurer reorganising its claims operations, a payments company growing across borders or a fund administrator automating its processing. I would prefer a member-owned or privately held company where the board's people decisions carry real weight, and I accept that I should serve on a committee before chairing one. What I would add is an employer's working knowledge of the pay rules for banks and insurers, of consultation with employee representatives and of what a reorganisation costs the people inside it. I am not seeking a seat in order to speak for employees in general. I want to help a board decide well when its people questions are expensive, uncertain and difficult to reverse.

Governance learning and readiness

IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered

India's databank for independent directors is a national register that does not apply to the European boards I am considering. I am not registered, and the status appears here only because the profile records one.

In 2023 I completed a programme for cooperative-bank board members run by our national network's training institute, attending as an executive observer.
Each year I review the European supervisors' published guidance on remuneration and suitability with our compliance director before the identification exercise begins.
As treasurer of an apprenticeship association, I prepare its accounts for the board and the annual general meeting, which has shown me a director's duties from the inside.

Board and committee exposure

Presented to the Board or a committee

Banque Ardevrange

Remuneration committee and nomination committee

January 2019–present

Presents the remuneration policy, the annual identification of risk-taking staff, malus recommendations and succession plans for key functions as chief human resources officer; not a director of the bank.

Served as a director

Association Trévalmont pour l'alternance

Board of directors; treasurer since 2024

March 2022–present

Unpaid director of a non-profit association placing apprentices with small employers around Thionville; prepares its accounts for the board and the annual general meeting. Not a regulated or commercial board.