ANZ bank CIO to ‘step down’

ANZ group CIO Anne Weatherston will leave the bank, effective immediately, after four years in the role.

An ANZ spokesperson would not confirm the reason why Weatherston decided to “step down”, but said a global search for a new CIO will kick off now. Chief operating officer Alistair Currie has been appointed interim CIO while a replacement is found.

Weatherston joined ANZ in 2010 from a group CIO role at the Bank of Ireland and has worked in senior IT roles across a number of major financial organisations internationally.

“We have made very significant progress under Anne’s leadership by establishing a transformation roadmap for ANZ technology aligned to ANZ’s super regional strategy,” Currie said in a statement.

“This has seen ANZ strengthen technology infrastructure, introduce new customer channels including mobile goMoney and ANZ Transactive, deliver new global processing systems in payments, loans and markets, move to a single core banking platform in New Zealand and develop a first-class technology organisation to support our business.

“We are now increasingly taking an integrated approach to the Group’s business transformation agenda across technology, shared services and operations. This is delivering more capability and better value for customers while driving significant productivity gains.”

In 2011, Weatherston helped established a lt;igt;Toward 2017lt;/Igt; strategy. This looks at creating greater connectivity through the provision of cross-regional customer services, and greater customer-centricity through a ‘joined-up’ customer experience.

The strategy also looks at the use of real-time business analytics, as well as greater integration and standardisation through developing systems and applications which can be scaled and used across the bank’s regional businesses.

Weatherston also implemented a private cloud in 2012 for all of the bank’s EIX Solaris services, introducing private cloud for its mainframe, Windows and Teradata environments.