RBS names Scott Marcar as CIO, Markets

Royal Bank of Scotland has appointed Scott Marcar as CIO of Markets within the Markets & International Banking division.

Marcar replaces Stephen Norman, who will retire from RBS in December. He will report to operations head David Shalders, chief logistics officer for markets, who in turn reports to the deputy CEO

Speaking to CIO UK, Marcar said his breadth of experience in a number of areas in the investment banking industry, such as fixed income technologies and risk management, together with postings overseas, such as the US, Latin America and Africa had made him suitable for the role.

He said his main area of focus will be reacting to the disruption in the banking sector as a whole, and in the technology arena.

“As a CIO it’s a question of how you optimise those transitions,” he said.

In practice, Marcar said a large part of his activities will be around creating cost efficiencies in his department. He said the company had been driven by revenue creation in the past which led to a patchwork-approach to IT deployments.

“The next few years will be around less tech that needs to do more,” He said. “When the company was in a revenue chasing model, the technology had to follow that line. Where capital is more constrained we need to take the complexity out of the environment.”

However, he conceded that some areas of investment banking, such as Foreign Exchange, have become core technology businesses and he will be looking into developing systems to drive those businesses.