Mark Hall to join HMRC CIO predecessor Phil Pavitt at Aviva

HMRC CIO Mark Hall is set to follow predecessor Phil Pavitt and join Aviva.

Hall will leave the public sector and join the insurance company on October 1, when Mark Dearnley arrives from Vodafone to take up the new chief digital and information officer role.

An Aviva spokesman said: “Mark Hall will be responsible for the general management of the running and improvements of Aviva’s IT systems for its employees. We look forward to having him on the team.”

Former Transport for London CIO Pavitt is IT transformation director at Aviva, reporting to COO Cathryn Riley who was also the company’s global leader of IT for a year while there was no CIO role, responsible for rationalising and simplifying Aviva’s IT, adopting a modern digital architecture, improving service to customers and reducing IT revenue and capital expenditure costs.

Reports circulated that Hall was recommended by former boss Pavitt for the joint CIO and digital role at HMRC before the government hired Dearnley for his experience in digital technologies.

Hall told CIO magazine in June his focus had been on making HMRC a digital business as part of government CTO Liam Maxwell’s ‘digital by default’ strategy, and said only last week while discussing the department’s £8 billion Aspire contract that although business are able to outsource IT, due to rapid technological developments and an increasingly complex landscape they will not be able to outsource digital.