Banking on it

BNZ’s new CIO Peter Yarrington takes a fresh look at IT in New Zealand.What are the biggest challenges for CIOs? There is a constant focus on doing more with existing resources. Financial services organisations need to remain relevant, so their technology needs to keep pace with the changing needs of customers while delivering rates of ROI that we would expect from any other investment. Customer-led innovation is one of the concepts that is challenging most IT organisations – and businesses – right now.

Who is in charge of the IT budget – the CIO or the CFO? I believe the CIO should be absolutely accountable for the IT budget – and there should be no distinction between technology cost management and the rest of the business budget management. This means that the CFO should be looking at technology cost – and returns – alongside all other business investment options.

What are the traits needed to be a CIO? A passion for business and the way technology can deliver customer benefits. Curiosity; a desire to learn, understand and assimilate innovative ideas and new technologies to achieve better business outcomes.

What is the most difficult aspect of ICT for your company? I am still learning about the technology at BNZ, but I think it has a fantastic team and technology set, so my challenge is to add value to it and protect the great investments we have already made.

In general, what do you think  is the most pressing ICT issue at present? The global financial crisis has seen many technology organisations reduce their R&D budgets, so the level of technology innovation has slowed globally and we can expect this to have an impact for the next couple of years while the economy’s and companies’ balance sheets recover. In the absence of substantial new technological advancements coming from offshore, we will have an opportunity to innovate locally and drive value from our existing technologies.

Is the government doing enough for ICT? The government focus on broadband network delivery to consumers is going to be one of the key issues for the financial services industry in the next few years. This will be a major facilitator to delivering really rich content to our customers – something that would be much tougher if the government was not taking an interest.

Is New Zealand behind the rest of the world in private sector ICT infrastructure? I don’t believe so. In the case of National Australia Group, there is a strong desire to leverage the great technology innovations that the BNZ has created across other parts of the global business. I think there is a very positive view of BNZ’s ability to create and commercialise new technologies.

What about public sector ICT infrastructure? Based on what I have learned so far, the New Zealand public sector technology seems to be quite comparable with what I have seen in the US, UK and Australia – ask me again in a few months!What is the most exciting thing happening in ICT now? I think the current move to expand high-speed broadband access to most of the population will have profound impacts on how companies create and deliver products and services to consumers. This applies especially to the financial services industry. Disintermediation by aggregators has been an issue, so our challenge will be to help consumers to quickly and easily access, compare and assemble a suite of banking products and services.

What will be the next big thing in six months’ time? Looking at the speed of innovation  in the mobile device space, I think we  will see some major developments and partnerships between device manufacturers  and content providers.

Do you believe in the cloud computing hype? If you separate the ‘marketing hype’ from the reality, it is inevitable that some of the technology services that companies provide today will be delivered from the cloud in the future. The question is how quickly the cloud will grow in capability, capacity and performance. Security will be key.

If you could have one ICT item to make your business run smoothly, what would it be? I already have it: great people who are passionate about delivering reliable, high-performance technology to our business. I think they would like the technology to be more easily integrated, more reliable and quicker to diagnose when a problem does occur.

If you didn’t work in IT, what would you be doing? Working directly with customers in a service organisation. I enjoy the immediacy of the feedback you get in a consumer-facing role.