Our network

The Advisory Board advises the partners of Financial Assets on further expansion and how to strengthen the business, and also provides support for strategic and directional decisions.

Ruud Hendriks, LLM (chair) works as a senior consultant at Van Lanschot Kempen, Pictet and Add Value, among others. He also advises ultra-high-net-worth individuals at home and abroad. Previously, Ruud was a senior consultant at KKR, Lombard Odier and MAN Group, among others. Between 2000 and 2010, he was managing director at Goldman Sachs Asset Management and as co-head of sales he was responsible for the EMEA division. Between 1980 and 2000, Ruud worked at Robeco Institutional Asset Management as senior executive vice president, global head of institutional sales. During that period he was also a member of the Executive Board of Rodamco NV. Ruud studied law at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

Theo Kocken is Professor of Risk Management at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. In 2000, he established the Investment & Risk Management Consultancy firm Cardano. Theo is chair of the Cardano Development Foundation and also an extraordinary professor at NWU University in South Africa. Over the last 25 years, Theo has published various books and articles on risk management, pension funds and financial markets. He also produced the film Boom Bust Boom about the financial crisis together with Terry Jones (formerly of Monty Python fame). In 2022, Theo produced a documentary called Your 100-Year Life about the phenomenon of higher life expectancy and how we can accommodate it.
Before Theo founded Cardano in 2000, he worked in the banking sector as Head of Market Risk at ING and Rabobank. Theo graduated in Business Administration and Econometrics and obtained his PhD at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

Annemarie Mijer (1970) is vice chair of the Executive Board and Chief Risk Officer at Athora Netherlands. She is also a member of the Supervisory Board of Klaverblad Verzekeringen and a member of the Supervisory Board of Stichting Pensioenfonds Medisch Specialisten. Prior to that, she was Managing Director, Head of Central Risk Management at ABN AMRO and Member of the Board of Directors and Chief Risk Officer at the Delta Lloyd Group. Previously, she spent 20 years working at the ING Group and the NN Group, including as Director and Chief Risk Officer at Nationale-Nederlanden Leven. She was also vice-chair of the board of the Royal Actuarial Society from 2011 to 2018. Annemarie is an Actuary AG and Investment Analyst (RBA), and has extensive experience in the areas of Actuarial Risk, Operational Risk, Market Risk and Compliance.

Mark van den Biggelaar (1968) is an experienced Interim Director and CFO with a strong affinity for financial markets. In recent years he has carried out interim assignments at Flora Holland, NSI and CB (Centraal Boekhuis), among others. He began his career in 1990 in a sales position in the dealing room at ABN-AMRO. Mark was also a Board Member at the publicly listed construction company Heijmans for almost 8 years, and worked at Randstad for 10 years, among other roles as Managing Director for Business Planning, Strategy & Finance. Mark also has extensive experience in the field of restructuring, including as financial director at Samas NV. In addition, he has regularly been closely involved in major change processes involving new IT systems (digital transformations). Mark studied Business Administration at Nijenrode University (BBA) and Dutch law in Utrecht. He also obtained a Master’s degree in Financial Economics from TIAS (Tilburg University).

Shaktie Rambaran Mishre, LLM (The Hague, 1980) is a lawyer and business administrator. She also studied organizational psychology. She worked at the consultancy firm KPMG for over ten years, achieving the position of Associate Director. Here she was a thought leader in the field of customer trust, change and leadership development in the financial sector. Since 2015, she has had her own practice and advises directors, supervisory directors and managers on how to translate organizational strategy into governance, culture and behaviour, helping them to achieve continuous improvement. Shaktie is also chair of the Supervisory Board of Univé (het groene hart) and the remuneration committee. She is also a lecturer at Nyenrode University and Erasmus University Rotterdam, among others. Previously, she was a member of the Public Administration Council, an advisory body to the Dutch government and parliament, and a member of the Bank Council, a sounding board for managers of De Nederlandsche Bank.

Assets Only® matches financial institutions with professionals and specialists who add value. With various distinctive labels, Assets Only is active in the areas of Risk & Compliance, KYC & AML, Lean & Process Improvement and Business & Information Analysis.

As a niche player secondment bureau, Assets Only helps clients to find the right experts quickly and professionally. To this end, it invests continuously in finding, training and developing skilled personnel. Its philosophy is that a genuine commitment to the needs and ambitions of our seconded employees leads to better trained and – above all – motivated people. After all, for truly long-term relationships, the relationship needs to be mutually beneficial.

More than 50 Assets Only specialists are currently working at over 15 companies and institutions. These include major Dutch and overseas banks, but also smaller banks, trust offices, asset managers, pension providers and payment platforms.

Career Advice
Financial Assets provides Career Advice, a service designed especially for experienced professionals in the financial sector and focusing on reorientation with regard to work, position and employer. Career Advice is geared to professionals who are looking for a new job and a new challenge. Professionals whose biggest questions are “What is out there, what am I qualified for and how do I get where I want to be?”
Financial Assets: in-depth knowledge and specialist partners with over 25 years of experience in the Dutch financial markets. Perhaps there are areas that you need to brush up on, or specific extra study options you could complete to make sure that your career runs as smoothly as you want it to. Career Advice, specifically aimed at professionals and their own individual interests, comes in two forms:

Quick Career Advice
Quick Career Advice consists of a one-hour session to talk about your interests, competencies and realistic, external possibilities. For candidates who do live outside the Netherlands, this can be done online of course.

Career Counselling
Career Counselling offers a more comprehensive approach to career advice, geared towards your own personal development with the aim of bringing you closer to achieving a desired and lasting career change. In three one-hour meetings spaced at least one week apart, you will take a closer look at the relevant opportunities in the external market. What is the current state of the market? What kinds of competencies, experience and mindset are in demand?

Financial Assets maintains contact with Dutch investment and finance professionals who are working abroad in the world’s major financial centres, such as London, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Brussels, Paris, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, New York, Singapore and Luxembourg.

We are also part of an International Alliance along with specialist executive search firms in Germany and Switzerland: Fricke Finance & Legal GbR (Frankfurt T +49 69 981 92 78 0) and Guggenbühl & Bächer Recruitment AG (Zürich T +41 44 211 12 21).

In the Netherlands, Financial Assets is a partner of the Dutch Association of Corporate Treasurers, or DACT.
The DACT is the leading professional association for corporate treasurers and treasury professionals in the Netherlands and has approximately 750 members working at multinationals, large and medium-sized companies, in the public sector and in non-profit organizations.
As a professional association, the DACT works to promote the professional development of its members. It provides a network within which treasury professionals feel connected with each other and it facilitates a platform for the exchange of information and deepening of knowledge.

Financial Assets is a proud sponsor of Alternatives 4 Children.

Alternatives 4 Children (A4C) is an independent charitable foundation established in 2011 with the aim of involving professionals from the (alternative) financial industry in the Netherlands. Originally founded by professionals from the Dutch Alternatives Industry, A4C is now open to all countries and people from the financial sector. Since 2020 they now also have a UK registered Chapter.