Hello, I am Xavier Durand, the CEO of COFACE. The truth is that when I accepted this invitation to speak this afternoon, I had no idea what I was getting into. I thought the idea was interesting. Usually, I speak in a very standardized, structured framework, and here I face a new freedom, exciting as it is frightening. To be able to say absolutely what I want or what I can on a theme that is immense and so consubstantial with our human condition: truth. The truth is that 7 minutes allotted for this speech is short, and it can also seem terribly long when you start to gather your ideas. So I asked myself how to approach this question of truth, and as often when the subject is important, we go back to basics. I thought back to my childhood, to my grandfather Émile, a school principal in a Catholic school, convinced of truth, but curious about science, and passionate about agronomy, and to my father, a physics professor at the university, and his thirst to always want to explain everything. And it was while writing this text that I perhaps realized what they really brought me. So I told myself, you have to start with yourself and I will come this afternoon to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. And already saying that, a doubt arose: is it even possible? Isn't swearing it dishonest, even pretentious? We agree, there is only one physical state, only one situation that exists at a given moment, a truth therefore that should be relatively easy. But Heisenberg himself demonstrated that uncertainty is an integral part of truth. And then, this elusive truth can actually be looked at from a large number of dimensions. And then we start to doubt. We also know that in physics, the simple observation of a phenomenon interferes with it. So the more I look for this truth, the more I modify it, the more I distort it. And as you see, it's complicated. Then it gets even harder. Truth is described with words that are imbued with culture, history. It is estimated through judgments or numbers to try to make a realistic representation. And that means that several observers will have different, even contradictory renditions of this same truth. And finally, summarizing it in a few words, we can only make a simplified, biased description. You'll admit it's disheartening. The more we look at it in detail and closer, the more complex it will appear. We see this well in biology. For example, the more we dig, the more we find and the more complicated it gets and the less we understand. So why am I telling you all this? Because if the detail is so complex, how can we be so sure that the totality of what it represents globally remains understandable? That this reality still makes sense? And yet it's critical. It's so important. If we stray too far from this truth, the consequences can be dramatic. History proves it. We can bleed patients dry to try to cure them. We can sacrifice innocents on altars to ward off disasters. We can launch entire peoples into useless wars. We can do almost anything to a human group that is convinced it holds the truth. So, Dad, you who in your lifetime never understood what I was doing in capitalist finance. It's perhaps in this quest for truth that we share a common point. The connection with my role as a CEO, an expert on risk, economics, boss of a company with 5,500 people and which has an important role to play in facilitating nearly 3,000 billion euros of transactions in 200 countries around the world. Getting as close as possible to the truth while remaining extremely simple, concrete, visual to be able to share it and convince, inspire without distorting too much. That for me is the Holy Grail. That is the essence of the leader's role, the foundation of his ethics. And at Coface, we try to do that ultimately. We try to find where the risk of default of a company lies. We constantly assess the short-term solvency of 5 million companies. Is it healthy? Well managed? Will it grow or will it default? We approach this truth only statistically using data models, accumulated experience, multiple observation points, coordinated by a thirst for learning and permanent questioning, rigor and humility. For that, we invest in data, technology, expertise. We hired more than 800 people in 4 years in these areas. We invest tens of millions of euros per year to develop new systems. And thanks to these investments, we went from 10 days to 2 hours to process a request for information on a remote area. We went from 40 to 250 million companies referenced in our database. We respond to a request for information every 5 seconds. So all these are numbers, but behind these numbers, there are values that go beyond technology and progress. We know both that the past does not guarantee the future but also that certain laws are persistent. We know that critical judgment combined with awareness of one's own ignorance are the beginning of the path towards this statistical hope of truth that is so valuable. So of course, for those who have seen the movie, we can always hope that an unlikely Ethan Hunt will appear and single-handedly fight the takeover of truth by the entity. But if like me, you don't believe in American movie heroes in real life, maybe that's the truth: the ability to remain humble before its complexity, but determined to make it known to as many people as possible. Thank you.
