Nationwide Building Society to engage external experts to support the Board IT Committee

• The experts bring additional weight and knowledge as part of the Society’s continued commitment to digital Innovation, Mobile Channel, Payments, Data and Security innovation
• The Board IT Committee is accountable for technology architecture and transformation, innovation, cyber security and IT resilience strategy and governance at Nationwide

SWINDON, 26-Oct-2016 — /EuropaWire/ — Nationwide Building Society today announces the next stage in its continued commitment to delivering the latest technology and innovations to its 15 million members and customers with the engagement of external experts to support the Board IT Committee. The influential Committee has accountability for technology architecture and transformation, innovation, cyber security and IT resilience strategy and governance at the world’s largest building society.

These individuals bring additional weight and knowledge with a range of experts drawn from the payments, FinTech, Mobile Channel development, cyber security and data industries. Their decades of experience will complement the Society’s in-house teams as Nationwide continues the next stage of its multi-billion-pound transformation plan.

The engagement of external experts to support a Board sub-committee exclusively dedicated to IT strategy, technology, resilience, innovation and business transformation is believed to be one of the first of its kind in the financial services sector in the UK. This demonstrates the Society’s focus on delivering market leading developments, which have a real impact on the lives of millions of its members.

The experts are (further biographical information below):

• Conrad Prince – Former Director General, Intelligence and Strategy GCHQ
• Usama Fayyad – Former Chief Data Officer & Group Managing Director, Barclays Bank PLC
• Mark Hartley – Inventor of Clear2Pay Open Payment Framework
• James S. Greene – Ex Vice President, Global Financial Services, Cisco
• Lisa Stanton – Chief Executive Officer, InAuth Inc

To achieve its ambition of becoming the first choice for financial services Nationwide has invested in its mutual future by transforming and improving its systems and processes over the last six years through a large scale multi-billion-pound systems modernisation programme. This has resulted in the implementation of a completely new core banking and payments system which has enabled the Society to replace its internet bank, expand its suite of current accounts, introduce a new mortgage point of sale and processing system and a new mobile banking app, offering a greater choice to more customers. The benefits of its new system are already apparent, with new current account openings increasing by 21% in the first quarter of 2016/17, as over 139,000 new accounts were opened. At the same time, the Society has also consistently led the industry in independent customer satisfaction surveys.

Nationwide has continued this ambitious transformation strategy with investments and innovations that respond to changing member expectations and demands in a digital age. Nationwide recently became one of the first to offer both Apple and Android Pay, was first in the UK to offer wearable banking and earlier this year announced a new innovation collaboration project with Silicon Valley based Pivotus Ventures and Umpqua Bank. At the same time Nationwide has committed over £500 million to its branch network deploying market leading technology such as Nationwide NOW to around 400 end points.

However, the financial services industry continues to change at an unprecedented rate, as customer behaviour and the expectations of their providers grow rapidly and organisations invest to meet these needs while providing continued safety and security in an increasingly complex environment.

Tony Prestedge, Chief Operating Officer, Nationwide Building Society, commented; “Nationwide, as a mutual, is committed to making our members’ lives better through investing in innovations and technology, which will help customers have even greater access and control of their finances. The Society has a proud heritage of innovation, from introducing the first internet bank in the UK in 1997, to delivering a completely new core banking platform, market leading in-branch technology with Nationwide NOW and earlier this Summer a powerful new banking app.

“As millions of our members embrace the benefits of digital innovations we recognised the need to continue to ensure we have the right talent and leadership in place to meet the rapidly changing challenges and opportunities new technology presents. Bringing external expertise to support the Board IT Committee allows the Society to benefit from decades of combined experience at the most senior level, complementing our in-house experts, as we continue our ambitious innovation, technology and IT resilience investment.”

Conrad Prince: Conrad Prince served from 2008 – 2015 as the senior official responsible for the intelligence and cyber operations conducted by Britain’s signals intelligence and cyber security agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). He was the former deputy director of GCHQ from 2011 – 2015. He has been instrumental in the development of the strategy for, and operational application of, a range of advanced cyber techniques, including capabilities to counter cyber attacks on the UK and its allies.

Usama Fayyad: As the former Chief Data Officer and Group Managing Director at Barclays Bank in London UK, his responsibilities included data governance, information risk management and the data infrastructure for BI, data warehousing, Big Data and analytics technologies across the Barclays Group globally. He is a world-renowned leader in BigData and Data Science and has held key leadership positions at NASA, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and founded and led several tech startups in Seattle and Silicon Valley. He has published over 100 technical articles in the fields of Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Databases. Usama holds over 30 patents, is a Fellow of the AAAI (Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) and a Fellow of the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery. He continues to be active in the academic and research communities and has chaired the Applied Data Science Track at the largest international conference in the field.

Mark Hartley has a breadth of international experience across innovative software and payments solutions to the banking, FinTech and financial services industries. Mark invented Clear2Pay’s Open Payment Framework in 2004, and within five years Clear2Pay became the world’s leading supplier of Payments Hubs. Today, leading banks in the UK, Europe, the US and Australia use the platform.

James S. Greene has over three decades of experience in the global financial services industry, 21 of those years with Accenture where he was instrumental in creating and leading their global financial services business. The last 14 years were spread between being CEO of a technology start-up, global head of Financial Services for Cap Gemini, global head of Financial Services Consulting for Cisco and the last several years as a Managing Partner of a private equity fund focused on creating and incubating enterprise class analytics software companies. Recently he founded Sky D Ventures.

Lisa Stanton: Bringing more than 20 years of experience in financial technology, banking and payments, Lisa joined InAuth in 2014 as Chief Executive Officer. Before joining InAuth, Lisa established and served as the President of the Americas for Monitise, a global leader in the provision of mobile money services to banks, credit unions, processors, payment networks, MNOs and retailers. Prior to Monitise, Lisa spent 16 years at Citizens Financial Group, the 8th largest bank in the US, running the payments and channels divisions.

The Board IT Committee, which meets bi-monthly, is chaired by Nationwide’s non-executive director, Mitchel Lenson, who has spent over 30 years in the financial services industry and is a former Group Chief Information Officer at Deutsche Bank with responsibility for IT and Operations for all operating divisions of the bank, including its retail banking operations.

Mitchel Lenson, Non-Executive Director, Nationwide Building Society, commented; “For some time the Board of Nationwide has been keen to ensure we have world class strength in IT development, resilience and innovation. The engagement of these external experts will provide additional insight and challenge to ensure we effectively meet the opportunities of a digital age across our technology, innovation and IT resilience investment. We are looking forward to welcoming the new experts to the team and working to continue to deliver market leading innovations which have a real benefit to our members.”

About Nationwide
Nationwide is the world’s largest building society as well as one of the largest savings providers and a top-three provider of mortgages in the UK. It is also a major provider of current accounts, credit cards,ISAs and personal loans. Nationwide has around 15 million customers.

Customers can manage their finances in a branch, via the mobile app, on the telephone, internet and post. The Society has around 18,000 employees. Nationwide’s head office is in Swindon with administration centres based in Northampton, Bournemouth and Dunfermline. The Society also has a number of call centres across the UK.

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SOURCE: Nationwide Building Society