Standard Chartered’s energetic chief information officer is driving internal development by encouraging a culture of competition and innovation. Dan Barnes reports.
Chief information officers are busy people, each has their own style and method of management, their own levels of energy. Jan Verplancke, CIO at Standard Chartered, takes this into a league of his own – busy seems an understatement. On our third re-arrangement for an interview, I eventually get to talk to him – albeit in the back of a cab on the way to the airport.
Despite a schedule that appears to involve international travel at least twice a day, he seems neither tired nor preoccupied. Quite the opposite, as he enthusiastically launches into the “big picture” as he sees it – having worked in a number of industries, he is in a good position to compare and contrast banking with others.
“Financial services is having its moment in time right now. Manufacturing had it in the 1980s, the computer industry had it in the 1990s,” he says.
“There is now a lot of consolidation and the industry is waiting to see who will emerge as the big players in the future – and those may not only be banks,” he says, pointing to corporations, such as Wal-Mart, that are becoming involved in financial services.
Mr Verplancke has three major projects ongoing: increasing bandwidth for the bank’s network, upgrading workstations and data centre consolidation. All are running smoothly partly thanks to third-party assistance, he says. “Our two main data-centres are in Hong Kong and London. We consolidated most of [our Asian data centres] into our Hong Kong [centre] last year – a real effort, given the regulatory and physical requirements – but we worked with Atos Origin and did a virtually flawless consolidation.”
As though that were not enough to occupy his time, Mr Verplancke says: “That’s just what we do in the morning!” He is constantly driving for market share and improved customer service. To achieve it, he is keen to retain internal development.
Core development
An example of this is the bank’s core banking system. It has been upgraded in 26 countries, based on an internally designed platform that was originally developed for managing the Middle East from Dubai. “We looked at the packaged software in this area and then at our own system. It had all of the functionality required, using Java and the latest technologies so we stuck with that,” he says.
Mr Verplancke does not claim to be acting in a way that is radically different from the rest of the industry. “A lot of what we’re doing is what everyone else is doing – improving efficiency, Six Sigma [defect control] – so I’m not claiming to be better or worse than anybody else,” he says. Nevertheless, he sees advantages in Standard Chartered’s comparative position, being smaller than some banks enables adaptability, being widely distributed across a number of geographies creates internal competition that drives development. He is also keen to seek opportunity. With regulatory pressure still number one on most CIOs’ headache list, Mr Verplancke could be expected to wilt under the extra strain.
But far from it. Taking Basel, he sees not just opportunity but the chance to improve upon well-established processes. “Basel prepares you with a data warehouse that combines all of your data from the customer level, so that you can make snapshot decisions at any time based on accurate data.
“Traditionally that’s something that banks didn’t do, which companies like Dell and Walmart are very good at. So you have a single number with no discussions around levels of accuracy that you get with a general ledger. You have time to apply the data, not question it.”
Work hard, have fun
Perhaps the comment that most defines Mr Verplancke’s vision is: “If you are going to work hard, you should have fun doing it.”
He realises this by keeping his teams active, motivated and reaching for the sky. “In technology and operations, we have yearly events for our teams. This year we are doing a Race to Space, looking for really groundbreaking ideas. The prize is to travel in a MiG 29 up to the troposphere.”
CAREER HISTORY
2004: CIO, group head of technology & operations, Standard Chartered
1999: CIO, Dell, EMEA
1999: Head of systems for youth category, Levi Strauss, San Francisco. Also responsible for automation and process improvement
1994: Chief architect, Levi Strauss, San Francisco
1986: Joined Levi Strauss, Brussels, introduced PCs in western European affiliates
