Student Loans Company appoints interim CDO

The Student Loans Company has appointed Chris Airey as its interim chief digital officer.

Airey, the former IT director of the Lifestyle Services Group who featured in the 2013 edition of the CIO 100, started the temporary position on July 7 and told CIO UK his responsibilities were to “set up the new CDO function, steady the ship and provide a handover for the permanent CDO when they are recruited”.

Airey said that the SLC was undergoing its own transformation process at the moment, and as one of the government’s ‘exemplar’ services will re-align the organisation with the government standards and adopt the new framework set out by the Government Digital Service following the departure of director of IT Gordon Vincent.

The Student Loans Company, which is owned by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, provides around £12.5 billion each year in fees, loans and grants to the higher and further education sectors in the UK. It processes around 1.3 million student finance applications per annum, while managing an asset book of around £63 billion with over 14.8 million customer accounts.

As well as its transactional banking side of the organisation with its multi-billion pound loan book, the Glasgow-based SLC also operates a call centre in Darlington, and another in Llandudno for its Welsh students.

Also associate director of project analysts Gracye, Airey was director of business change and IT for the Lifestyle Services Group from September 2011 until December 2012, and last year helped lead a study by RPC Consulting into the challenges of local government and public sector CIOs into joint procurement and shared services.