Helle Bak Svenningsen celebrates 40 years in BEC

“… A great digital journey!” 

 This is how Helle Bak Svenningsen describes her four-decade BEC career in four words, she elaborates: “If I look back 40 years ago, I couldn’t dream of how fast it has gone. 40 years ago, if I went to Greece, I had to have money or travelers’ cheques. Now we can pay with our mobile – we can pay with our watch – anywhere we are in the world. It’s a different world today. I have never been to a place where I couldn’t use my credit card. Banking has come so far.” 

Joining fresh out of school, Helle worked as a programmer at BDC. Since then, Helle has seen so many changes in BEC, such as BEC (then known as BDC) merging with her company, to the phase out of the cheque, to mitigating the ‘Millennium Bug’. Helle reflects on how she began her career as one of only a few women, as well as being one of the youngest people in the office, too: “I thought there were so many old men!’ she laughs, “Everyone was very nice and helpful, actually. If I needed help, I could ask. But we used to talk quite rough to each other!” 

“We have a very different way of talking to each other now” she comments.

“Today I think all the people in BEC are very young! But it’s the place that has changed, it’s not me getting older. No, no, me? I’m getting younger.” Staying young at heart means Helle keeps her zest to collaborate with the younger professionals at BEC. She admits to having “raised quite a few graduates” throughout her career – “this was back when there were no formal programs for them to follow. Graduates were placed in departments, so I would spend time to guide and help them.” 

In her tenure, Helle has taken on many other roles in BEC. Starting as a programmer, transforming into a project leader, progressing on to a department leader and now working as a subject matter expert concerning maintenance in the domain Wealth Management and Trading. 

“I am a maintenance girl. I have always loved maintenance, to help our customers and seeing it from their point of view and then thinking about what I can do to help. As a subject matter expert on maintenance, I think a lot about how we use our processes, are we implementing a whole process, and are we following up in the correct way? I’m kind of an expert in a lot of tools about around maintenance, so with that I can help a lot of people.” 

With a wealth of knowledge accumulated throughout the years, Helle’s expertise is sought after in the company. However for Helle, this not tiring, more the opposite: 

“I interact with so many people every day and I think it’s lovely. I love it. I really love to have all of these different kinds of tasks every day. I don’t have one day that is normal! Especially I like to talk to all the young people who have joined BEC, if I can help them navigate problems better. I also really like to hear their perspectives on things. I think it’s lovely to help them.” 

When Helle is not helping others at BEC, she enjoys relaxing by knitting as well as spending time with the “dessert of her life” – her 3 grandchildren. Besides that, Helle loves to travel, taking frequent trips across Europe, particularly to Turkey and Greece together with her husband. It is in Turkey, her family and her will have their first holiday together this year.  

After dealing with some health issues a few years ago, Helle explains that she puts more emphasis on gratefulness; “I really love coming to work you know I never have one day when I think oh, I don’t want to go to work today!”  

“I hope the customer – they don’t know it’s me – but I hope they can feel that BEC is more focused on helping them with their daily work. We can deliver more to our customers also. We have been a lot better at handling all the questions and incidents from our customers. And I hope they can see it… actually, I know they can.”