A major Brussels-based banking group has announced that two board members are stepping down, with the successors already approved by the Belgian authorities.

The Belgian banking group, KBC, has announced that Professor Dirk Heremans and Julien De Wilde have stepped down from the boards of directors of KBC Group and KBC Bank, respectively. The move is in line with a previously announced succession plan, the firm said in a statement. 

Heremans is being replaced by Júlia Király, who until earlier this year had been the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Hungary.

Király started her career as a research economist at the Central Statistical Office in Hungary, before taking up a similar post at the National Planning Office. In 1989, she became chief executive and dean of banking strategy, monetary economics and risk management at ITCB Consulting & Training. Király then served as deputy governor responsible for Financial Stability at the MNB, the Central Bank of Hungary.

She has also served as a member of the board of directors of the Hungarian Credit Bank; on the advisory board of the Supervisory Authority; and on the board of directors of K&H Bank. She was chairperson of the Postbank and Savings Bank Corporation and was recently appointed head of department at the International Business School of Budapest, after serving as a professor since 1993.

Julien De Wilde is being replaced by Nabil Ariss, former vice chairman of JP Morgan in London.

Ariss started his career at the French securities company Jacques François-Dufour, Jean-Louis Kervern & Cie. He joined McKinsey in 1987 as a management consultant, and then moved on to JP Morgan, where he developed the European corporate finance business and became vice chairman in 2009.

In addition, he has been advising corporate and financial institutions for 26 years on strategy, operations, organisation, mergers & acquisitions and capital. He is a member of the board of the Centre for Lebanese Studies at St Antony's College - University of Oxford.

Both nominations have been approved by the National Bank of Belgium, the statement said.

In related news, the KBC Group posted its latest quarterly results last week, with the third quarter of 2013 amounting to a net profit of €272 million ($365.95 million), down from the previous quarters’ €517 million and €531 million in profits a year earlier. Read more on that story, here.