After nearly three decades of service, Laura Barrowman has said goodbye to Credit Suisse. Her departure leaves the role of Group CIO open.
Laura Barrowman is leaving Credit Suisse after 28 years, Switzerland's second-largest bank confirmed to finews.com upon request Wednesday. She departed at the end of January and according to reports, her replacement has not yet been found.
Swiss business portal «Tippinpoint» had first reported the departure.
Barrowman who worked from London left the bank without bitterness, according to a message on her Linkedin profile. «Today, on my last working day at the bank, I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude,» she wrote.
Promoter of Diversity
Barrowman was reportedly held in high esteem at Credit Suisse where she had made a name for herself as a promoter of diversity and women's careers in IT. Since 2021, she held the role of workplace conduct ombudsperson in the group.
She become CIO in 2019, and in early 2022 received a new supervisor in chief technology and operations officer Joanne Hannaford who immediately set about restructuring and making the bank's IT services more customer-centric. She sought to implement a «culture of engineers» geared towards accelerating the digitization of banking and agile working methods.
Barrowman is said to have actively supported the transition to the new CTOO leadership structure.
Tour de Force
Hannaford's announcement was made before the bank's CEO Ulrich Koerner presented the new strategy for the ailing bank last October. Given cost-cutting measures and the planned elimination of 9,000 jobs in the group by 2025, investments in IT are likely to become an even greater tour de force in the future.
Like its local rival UBS, Credit Suisse is also sitting on a legacy IT system with some components that are decades old, centered around core banking software from the Geneva-based software company Temenos. This proprietary system already consumes a lot of money in maintenance and makes it difficult to convert to new technology requirements such as open banking.
