Jahangiri: You spent the last two years establishing ING – Retail Banking in the Ukraine. What was the most significant challenge in creating a new retail bank from the ground up?


Henderson: It is difficult to identify the most significant challenge in an environment where the bureaucratic, regulatory and general business practices are still heavily influenced by the Soviet era. For a New Zealander, with no Russian skills, simply buying a bottle of milk was a milestone!


The one achievement I receive the most satisfaction from was being able to lead an IT team with an average age of 22 to deliver a fully operational ING Retail Bank within six months. When I arrived in Kiev, I had five young staff members sitting together in a shared office; six months later we still only had 23 in the team but we were sitting in our own head office, with two data centres, 10 outlets (including ATM and AST network), two products, and Visa debit card, secure internet banking, contact centre, straight-through back office and an ability to deliver one new outlet per week after that.


It was the proudest moment of my career – and to this day I still reflect on how much value a highly-engaged, focused team of professionals can deliver if you let them – regardless of their experience.


Jahangiri: You were appointed CIO of ING Direct at the end of 2009. What are your key IT projects for the year ahead?


Henderson: 2010 will be another challenging year for us. We have a number of improvement initiatives around governance and information management as we move towards Basel II advanced accreditation. We’re also delivering a full business project portfolio covering product and channel enhancements, as well as back office improvements to uplift our efficiency. We have just completed our second three-year architecture strategy and will begin execution of the first initiatives. Within IT, our major objectives relate to developing our people and our own capability to deliver. We have significant leadership and culture development programs in place and we’re looking to engage our teams to bring creativity and innovation back to the work floor to enable us to deliver IT services more effectively.


Jahangiri: With more than 1.4 million customers across Australia, ING Direct is arguably one of the country’s fastest growing financial institutions.  How vital is IT innovation to your ongoing success?


Henderson: As a direct bank, IT is a significant enabler for our business and as such we need to be effective in how we leverage IT innovation. It is vital that we work with our business to determine where best to invest and bring innovation to the bank and to our customers. It is also important that we innovate to improve our own efficiency – be it in project delivery, operations or human resources. Innovation can help us maintain our low cost model, maintain our nimbleness and ultimately offer our customers and our teams a better experience.


Jahangiri: Do you feel your past role as Chief Architect has given you a competitive edge over CIOs without such insight?


Henderson: I don’t think anyone can say they have an edge based on their background. We all work in unique business contexts and we have to adapt to different challenges each day. Our own experience is one resource we can use, but we have support from many areas – be it within our business, from our own teams, externally through our strategic partners, or simply our network of peers.


I grew up on a farm fixing things with No.8 wire so I have always been very pragmatic in my approach – whether as a developer or as a Chief Architect.  I’ve always worked to connect the business with IT, finding solutions, and this has given me a “jack of all trades, master of none” view of the world. I don’t buy into the hype and that attitude has stayed with me. I’m a generalist and as CIO you need to be conceptual, creative and comfortable with ambiguity. You need to be able to move quickly across many domains but then you need to make sense of it to lead the way forward effectively. It’s a fantastic role that draws on experience across your career.


Jahangiri: How sustainable is ING Direct’s commercial lead as an internet-only bank when traditional players are increasingly shifting their models online?


Henderson: The sustainability of our model will come from the continued engagement and passion of our team, our culture and our fresh approach to some of the oldest problems.  This is our competitive advantage and we are working on realising this in new and different ways. While we have done well in the past, our people are saying we can do better – as CIO my challenge now is to find the right channels to let that happen. I’ve seen 23 fired-up people build a bank; with 200, imagine what we could do.


We believe in our model, but more importantly we believe in our people - we have much more to come.


Jahangiri: Mobile banking and social media continue to receive attention as the emergent channels in online banking. What is the next frontier of next-generation banking?


Henderson: The ‘next-generation’ is about truly understanding what our customers want from us. We need to rebuild trust and be acknowledged as a partner. How does our customer want us to support their own financial interaction with life – whether it is in reality or in the digital sense? Technology can provide boundless options, but it’s about really listening to our customers and determining how best to support them.


It is clear that we need to be secure; we need to be anywhere that our customer needs us and we need to be able to adapt quickly to their changing needs. Luckily we have plenty of options – it’s about finding the right balance.


Jahangiri: Which areas of internet banking tend to be the most vulnerable to security breaches?


Henderson: While customers need to be aware of the importance of keeping personal information secure, ING Direct is constantly reviewing threats and introducing appropriate measures to mitigate these. We mitigate these risks via our logon pin-pad technology, through an SMS 2nd factor for high-risk transactions, and we have a sophisticated real-time monitoring solution in place that watches high-risk transactions as they are processed. In addition to making banking with ING Direct secure, we are looking at making these as simple and straightforward for the customer as possible.


Jahangiri: How closely aligned is ING Direct’s IT roadmap with that of the global ING group, and how far in advance is your technology mandate mapped out?


Henderson: ING Direct globally works under the concept of a fleet of companies. Each country is in a different stage of their evolution and face differing market challenges at different times. Thus, we don’t have a one-size-fits-all approach. We share architecture standards and frameworks but we generally use these as a guide in each local market. Each country is asked to follow the standards where practical but we deviate where necessary. 
The team here in Australia contributes significantly to the global architecture and technology standards and in my previous role I chaired the global architecture expert group which governed these.


Locally, we are very well aligned and we’ve just completed a renewal of our three-year IT architecture strategy. It is important that we maintain our low cost and nimble model and we protect that fiercely – but we also work to leverage experience, architectures and practice from within the Group.


Jahangiri: What are some of the more interesting IT trends emerging in online banking?


Henderson: The development of the end-user device; the convergence of the channels towards this device coupled with the evolution in mobile and social media all promise some interesting opportunities for innovative banks. Security remains a significant focus and our capability to be innovative and customer friendly, while at the same time managing risk will become a differentiator. Maturing online, real-time electronic customer verification will create more opportunities for touch-less customer acquisition and support for more significant straight through processing in the back office. Lower cost models supported by more efficiency from our core processes within the enterprise will also mean a better value proposition for our customer – it’s their money after all.


Jahangiri: What keeps you passionate about your job – is it the technology or the sector?


Henderson: To be honest it’s neither. My passion comes from seeing a team that I lead succeed.


I’ve learnt very quickly that while harnessing technology is a buzz, as a leader you get that buzz when you see your people develop, experience failure, and then succeed. Watching a team confident to take on new challenges, to deliver the unexpected, and to see them having fun while doing it is immensely satisfying.


Too many people in IT have arrived in leadership positions without being supported to succeed in these roles. They’ve been excellent technologists, but have failed to translate this into leadership through no fault of their own. My passion is to fill in that gap, to prepare my team, to open up the opportunities for their development and to have a team knocking on the door for my role.


Jahangiri: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours?


Henderson: Its early days to be talking about a legacy but I would like to think that I would have been able to work with the talent in my team to develop and deliver on an IT strategy that exceeded the expectations of our business, making a significant contribution to ING Direct being “Australians’ favourite place for money”.


To build a talented IT leadership team that had engaged and empowered their teams to deliver on that strategy within a dynamic high performance environment. Business confidence would be high and we would have a fantastic platform on which to build for the future.