|
Craig Lee is CIO of Honolulu-based American Savings Bank (ASB), Hawaii's third-largest financial institution with $6.7 billion in assets. Founded in 1925, the bank recently embarked on a business transformation effort, moving from a savings and loan model to that of a full-service commercial bank with 65 branches. We spoke with Lee about his efforts to drive that transformation -- including how he ended up outsourcing key banking applications, even though that wasn't in the original plan. His quest: to become a true business partner.
Interview With: Craig Lee |
TITLE: CIO
COMPANY: American Savings Bank
LOCATION: Honolulu
IT STAFF: 50
KEYWORDS: Outsourcing, strategic projects, talent recruitment
BACKGROUND: Started at ASB in 1980; became CIO in 2001. |
What's your biggest business challenge?
We're in the midst of converting to a full-service community bank. The business needs to penetrate the market more. But we're isolated on the island. Hawaii is not growing. We're bounded by water. How do you steal market share? The business challenge is to make that transition.
What's your IT shop like?
We have approximately 50 people. We outsource the core banking apps to Metavante Corp. in Milwaukee. These are everything needed to run the accounts of our customers: general ledger, customer information system, deposit system. Some systems such as HR are internal, but anything affecting the customer's data is outsourced.
Our IT staff isn't focused on operations anymore. We can truly focus on strategic projects.
What's the biggest IT challenge?
Many of the systems required to support that transformation are in other people's hands. Aligning IT with the business strategy and becoming a trusted adviser to the business and earning a seat at the table is our challenge.
How did you become CIO?
As a thrift, we had an in-house shop with our own data center. Then the technology organizational structure changed drastically.
I started at ASB in 1980. I was responsible for the conversion of the savings app. Then I moved into tech support. Eventually, I managed the data center. Then we went into a mini-outsourcing. The bank is a subsidiary of Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. (HEI) [a holding company]. We have the electric utility on most of the islands. There was also a freight group and an insurance group. The parent decided to consolidate at the holding company level. I moved from ASB to manage the HEI consolidated data center.
Around 2000 we started to decentralize again. When we outsourced the core apps, we no longer needed a mainframe and system support. HEI exited several businesses. They kept the bank and the utility. They had no need for a consolidated data center.
In 2001 they brought me back to the bank as CIO.
What did you find?
We were all over the place. IT was pretty decentralized. Some of the controls you'd expect weren't there. We needed firewalls and new technology like email to bring us into the 21st century.
|
