Banking in the Age of Technology: Legacy Banks' IT Challenges

Emily Ansella, CIO at BankMell, looked at her calendar and saw the date for John Komer's upcoming retirement party. Komer was the long-time head of IT for consumer banking, the bank's largest division. His retirement meant another vacancy in the IT department--and another gap in the organization's memory. Komer's protege had been the heir apparent until she unexpectedly quit two months prior, lured by a higher salary at a competing organization.

Ansella pondered how to fill Komer's position. No one else in the consumer banking IT department had the experience to jump two rungs to lead the division's technology efforts. Should she promote from within and invest the time and expense of training an employee on all legacy systems in the consumer banking division, even though that person might leave as quickly as Komer's protégé had? Or were these departures an opportunity to reorganize the bank's IT structure? Currently, each division unit had its own IT department responsible for the specialized databases, applications, and front ends of that division. Perhaps a centralized structure--with all IT inside one shared-services IT department--would be better.

As the person overseeing all four IT departments, Ansella had to think through the implications of her choices in terms of cost, innovation, and reliability at the 114-year-old bank.