The Group director of operations and risk at insurance giant RSA, David Weymouth talks to computer weekly about the essence of training the next generation of IT leaders, why a government operation to force an inspection of banks IT systems would not work and government operation to force an inspection of banks.
For five years, David Weymouth has been the director of operation and risk at insurance giant RSA and he has universal experience working in the finance sector that previously held the position of CIO at Barclays. He initiates an IT leadership program with 14 of its brightest global IT heads in conjunction with consultancy CIO Development.
From the acclaimed Boston Leadership Institute, the course incorporates modules however Weymouth says it will be an ongoing education. He said that the insurance industry has not needed to value technology in the same way that the banking was obliged or even retailers because so much of the interaction was asynchronous. It didn’t happened in reality and not that traditionally have that online flavor.
David Weymouth says that having a good people is even more important than having the latest technology and the global nature of the training program also fits in with RSA’s focus on overseas market growth. Base also to him, using technology effectively globally is becoming critical. The company has a varied estate of legacy IT, following a series of international acquisition. Yet Weymouth has taken a pragmatic approach to replacing systems.
It is not about the replacing and the replacing and ripping in most cases this is about a gradual migration from a legacy platform and the core processing systems. In some= cases that is about putting a layer of architecture in front of them and in others its about replacing part of them.
MANAGING IT SPEND
David Weymouth said that one challenge facing the management of IT has been consolidation.The onset of multichannel customer interaction over multiple devices has hit the industry hard. He said that is you had not worked outside the industry that might have been slow in recognizing that because it has hit other industries so hard and so fast. The underlying level of technology architecture has been inadequate and you find that a consistent theme. The insurance sector previously spent around 3% of budget on IT compared with the banking sector which is typically spent around 12%.
One of the part of the core infrastructure is the bits of technology that are hardest to justify in the industry because they don’t show such obvious payback. Doing a communication program, finance system, big human resource system is tougher to justify. It doesn’t mean that you don’t do them however in some industries they are taken as a given such as manufacturing.
REFERENCE:
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240161679/CIO-interview-David-Weymouth-CIO-RSA
