The bank job

Over the last ten years, technology has irrevocably changed the face of the modern bank. The internet has provided new ways to access accounts, move money, pay bills and apply for finance, and SMS alerts have provided a new way for banks to communicate with their customers. IT is more important than ever to the financial industry, and according to UVK Kumar, head of IT at Qatar's Doha Bank, modern day CIOs keep their eye firmly on the customer's needs and wants.

"Customer expectations are changing very fast, and they're expecting financial services to be delivered at their convenience, wherever they are. It's like an "anywhere, anytime" scenario. So we need to introduce more and more services over the internet, or even on mobiles. We alter according to customer needs, like SMS banking which covers pull/push transactions - you can make a payment and you can transfer funds. Customer expectation is really high, and that's the number one challenge," he states.

Kumar believes that in order to meet customer expectation, the CIO of a bank needs to be in touch with business strategy, and able to come up with the kind of innovations that will mark the bank out from a market that is becoming increasingly competitive. With globalisation, more and more big players are entering the market, and banks need to be able to use technology to give them an edge. However, without a focus on business strategy and the customer, the CIO will lag behind.

"Basically, I would say that he or she should see the big picture of the whole organisation, and the business roadmap. And they should know exactly what the end customer wants - what are they expecting, what is convenient for them - so they can really map from the strategy to the end customer, and see how technology can link these together," states Kumar.

"What we have in Doha Bank are strategy committees and I represent technology in those committees. We work closely together in these committees, sharing information and what the new technologies are, and how those technologies can enhance our services. It's a mutual give-and-take scenario, where we work together and come up with a strategy. Business strategy is finalised after the technology input," he adds.

Kumar has worked in IT banking for eighteen years, six of them with Doha. When he came to Doha, the big challenge that he found was that not only the bank but Qatar as a whole was opening up to technology, and his job was to provide a roadmap for the transformation. At the time, each of Doha's branches had its own server and information was consolidated centrally from these servers. Kumar's first step was to centralise the server architecture, quickly followed by the introduction of new applications and services that would make banking more convenient for the bank's numerous customers.