By Freya Purnell
Commonwealth Bank CIO and group executive, enterprise services, Michael Harte, will leave Australian shore to take up the role of chief operations and technology officer at Barclays Bank, based in London.
During his eight-year tenure with the CBA, Harte led the core banking modernisation project to replace legacy banking systems with an SAP solution – a project which took 1500 people nearly six years to implement.
In a statement, Commonwealth Bank CEO Ian Narev said an announcement regarding Harte’s replacement would likely be made in June, with the search to focus on internal candidates within the bank.
“Technology is a core strategic priority of the Group, and I am very pleased that we have a strong pool of internal candidates who will provide strategic continuity, and also lead us through the next phase of our technology and operations innovation, while maintain ongoing focus on security and resilience,” said Narev.
Harte will leave the group in mid-2014 to take up his new role.
On the appointment, Barclays group chief executive Antony Jenkins said, “Given Michael’s wealth of experience, he is ideally placed to lead the transformation of the Barclays Operations and Technology function and its continued focus on customer innovation, digital services and process automation.”
