Darryl, thank you so much for being here.
Can you tell us a bit about your transformation journey.
You've been on a journey for the last 2 1/2 years
since you joined.
-: Yeah.
-: What has that been like?
-: I joined in February of 2015.
And the mandate when I joined was to
really transform the IT function
to help the transformation of the overall group.
To basically map out how we're going to transform
HSBC into a simpler, better, faster bank
over the next 2 1/2 years.
My sort of mandate was to take hold of the IT function
and make it into a high-performing team of technology
people that could partner with the business
to help them transform the company.
Yeah, so this is not really an IT transformation,
it's actually the enablement of a business transformation.
We had to work very tightly within collaboration
with a business to determine what the programs were
that they needed to implement
to do their part of the transformation.
And then in parallel with that, we had to, within IT,
we had to reconfigure how we deliver IT.
The group is, you know, 150 years old.
It's a collection of acquisitions over many years;
lots of different applications and infrastructures
that needed to be simplified.
We set about a simplification program on architecture,
on infrastructure, on applications, and on data.
-: You had that huge change agenda
that you've just described.
-: Yeah.
-: To accomplish in less than three years.
So what is your advice for others who are embarking
upon large-scale change to that order of magnitude?
-: It has been a very ambitious timescale
to do some of the things that we've done.
I think some things are much easier
to implement and quicker than others, okay?
So, in terms of reorganizing the function,
getting IT organized the right way,
that was really the first thing.
We had to say, look, let's get our IT organized
into a cohesive global team,
properly interfacing with the businesses and functions.
You organize your team properly with a proper structure.
You recruit the right people and put the right people
in place to be credible partners with the business.
So the first thing is make sure you get
the right people in front of the business
so they can really work with them
as true peers and true partners;
without that relationship there
you're never gonna have the right dialogues.
So that's sort of the, what I call the quicker end.
I think the harder part, in the sort of
2 1/2 timeframe, is really the fundamental architectural
changes you have to make.
So if you're ripping out systems
and replacing them with new ones,
or you're taking 10 versions of something
and then trying to consolidate into one or two,
that's a much, it's a much tougher task to do
in that timeframe.
My advice to people would be, you know, in that order,
get the right operating model. Agree with the business.
Be really clear about what they're trying to deliver.
Be really, really clear about
the program of work that they need you to deliver,
and then do a serious assessment
of your capability to deliver that.
You know, be really honest about:
Do you have the right organization structure?
Do you have the right people?
Are you using the right methods?
And really, you know, examine the way you do things,
because how you do things is actually gonna be
the core element of the transformation.
-: So building on that,
HSBC is trying to both be efficient but also drive
a more innovative culture. -: Yeah.
-: So what is the role of technology as a function,
but also as a service
to the business in that?
-: Yeah, it's, yeah, so the challenges that
I have in my executive team, and the business team
actually, is to balance the needs of running
a stable service every day,
keeping our data and our customers secure,
enabling big change programs to happen at pace.
Then, adopting new ways of doing things,
you know, having your eyes and ears open
to what's happening in the industry
and being able to absorb and ingest
new ways of doing things at pace.
Where we've been trying to drive my team's focus,
and certainly my personal focus, is
what's happening in the world outside of HSBC
in terms of technology, innovation, and evolution.
So, what's very clear is that the customer base
is increasingly expecting to be able to consume
the bank services through mobile channels.
We're seeing a massive shift in social media.
Yeah? So people using social networking,
so we have to think about how we integrate
our banking services with the social networks.
My role and part of my team's, the CIOs' roles
that are in the business and functions:
to act as a conduit of those trends.
So, so that's important.
I think the other innovation we've had
is we've created a Technology Advisory Board
which is made up of six people who are,
you know, luminaries in their fields of expertise
in technology-the cyber experts, there's big data experts-
people who very familiar with how the trends are going
in the investment space and private equity
and VC and what people are investing in.
-: Looking ahead, what's going to separate the leaders
from the laggards when it comes to how,
so, how technology is delivered.
The 40,000 people who you oversee.
-: Yeah. -: How is that going to work?
-: We sort of concluded
in that early part of the transformation
that a wholesale shift across the company to Agile methods
was the only way to really turbocharge
the change of the company.
So we embarked upon a bigger education program
and a recruiting program to get, you know, experts
who are ingrained in Agile methods.
And as I say to you now, I mean two years into the program
we've trained thousands of people,
both in the business and in IT, to work in an Agile way.
So taking big programs that would have been
a two-year program, breaking them up into chunks,
you know, to sort of 90-day deliverables,
colocating cross-functional teams together,
and then delivering things on a regular cadence
so you can actually learn and get feedback
from the customer.
We are running a tech company here
within a bank, essentially, okay,
so we need to, the technology function here needs to, behave
and act and use the methods and culture
and tooling of a tech company.
I think what's really important is the top of the bank.
And when I talk about the top I mean
the chairman, the CEO, the Board of Directors,
and the senior management team need to recognize
the criticality of IT to the transformation of the company.
That's the first step.
It's very hard to do this from the bottom up,
you've really got to have the tone set from the top,
you've got to recognize that doing things that way
is the only way to really optimize the whole function,
you know, so, doing Agile, doing DevOps;
partnering with world-class tech companies,
as I said on the Cloud agenda and the Big Data agenda,
you know, I don't think we can really expect
to run infrastructure as effectively
as a Google or an Amazon.
And I think our view is that we should partner
with those types of companies to leverage
their infrastructure, and that allows us
to focus on the customer end of the proposition.
-: So final question.
You've talked about technology being the driver
of the business transformation that's happened over
the last few years at HSBC. -: Yeah, yeah.
-: Looking ahead, what is going to be the role
of technology in, say 5, 10 years time for a bank like HSBC?
Do you see it being fundamentally different from today?
-: The world is changing around us, the environment
is changing so fast that our customers are demanding
that we, you know, use the new technology
that's available to them, as consumers.
Long gone are the days where IT is a cost to be managed.
It's now actually a strategic weapon to be harnessed
and to be, to be focused on how to really compete
and differentiate with customers.
And I think that's certainly the way
that we feel about technology here at HSBC.
-: Darryl, thank you so much for your time.
It's been a pleasure talking to you
and good luck with the rest of your transformation.
-: Thank you very much.
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