.png?width=3190&height=852&name=logo_CIONET_horizontal_nosignature_white_RGB%20(8).png "logo_CIONET_horizontal_nosignature_white_RGB (8)"){kind=logo}
%20copy%202.png)
The CIONET Cookbook comprises recipes for success from 25 of today’s most influential and dynamic information technology leaders, across all sectors of business.This is the result of our research and interviews with top Digital Leaders. The CIONET Cookbook uses the analogy of a five-star restaurant to explain the importance of optimally integrated technology.
Meanwhile dive in to the next recipe with our Masterchef Krzysztof Dąbrowski, COO at mBank.
Born as a digital-native before the term FinTech was even coined, mBank was the first fully internet-based bank in Poland. Today, it sets the direction of travel for the future development of mobile and online banking. The digital bank’s former CIO and CTO and now COO, Krzysztof Dabrowski, describes mBank as a disruptive player, offering free products, such as cards and accounts, that help to democratise banking.
When Krzysztof took up the role of COO two years ago, which also includes responsibility for back-office functions, security and IT, he was able to apply many of the techniques that he had learnt from IT to operations and vice versa. At the centre of his combined approach to IT and operations is ‘one culture, one way of doing things’. This approach requires the introduction of standard workflow practices and measurement systems.
Despite mBank being a digital native, Krzysztof discovered that the key obstacles to realising his plans were the legacy systems that had accumulated during the previous 20 years. As a COO, his secret sauce for success has been to tackle this problem across both the retail and corporate banks simultaneously.
mBank has experienced exceptional growth since its inception – with an impact on IT. In Krzysztof’s words: “We often had to prioritise growth over perfection”. At its inception, the digital bank implemented a mainframe-based core system with its programs written in COBOL. This system provided critical customer features but was costly and slow to modify. It also became increasingly difficult for the digital bank to find COBOL programmers.
Krzysztof’s solution to this challenge was to create a COBOL compiler that converted code to a .NET environment for Microsoft Windows. This conversion process allowed mBank’s source code to run on a modern platform and to support the business’ high-growth trajectory. Krzysztof hired a local IT boutique to help with the conversion process and to provide ongoing support. Today, mBank runs a mainframe and a Windows platform in parallel. The benefits are:
From the inception of the digital corporate bank, mBank adopted Temenos banking software, running on an IBM Unix platform. As in the case of the retail banking operation, Krzysztof realised that this approach was both costly and inflexible to changing customer needs. Once again, he adopted a translation method and converted prevailing code based on J-BASIC to C#. This conversion meant the Bank could cut its ties with COBOL and adopt modern languages such as C# and C++.
Both the retail and corporate projects were completed at the same time, allowing the bank to operate in a more responsive and agile manner to rapidly changing market conditions, especially during the recent coronavirus pandemic.
Krzysztof has arranged the IT organisation to align more closely with key customer segments and associated business units. These combined IT and business teams apply modern development methods. However, he has retained the established IT team to run operations across the group or what he refers to as “keeping the lights on”.
In retail banking, there has been a complete reorganisation of IT based on new development techniques such as agile and scrum. This reorganisation was enabled by mBank’s escape from its legacy, mainframe environment. Krzysztof recognises there is always constructive tension between the business and IT, where the former is driven by creativity and the latter hindered by system constraints. However, the move to a Windows environment has helped narrow the gap.
Within corporate banking, Krzysztof recognises that progress has often been slower due to structural and regulatory complexities. He has adopted a step-by-stepapproach that breaks complex workflows down into smaller chunks. Every month, his team delivers two or three redesigned processes into production. In this way, mBank has avoided a big- bang implementation that is risky within a highly regulated environment.
Being a digital native, mBank has had less difficulty attracting IT talent than the incumbent banks in Poland. However, Krzysztof recognises that he faces a tough fight for the best resources. He has chosen, where possible, to train his own talent. He believes start-ups offer graduates more freedom to develop skills, but there is clearly more risk involved when only one in 10 start-ups survive. Banks and more established organisations offer greater job security, but at the price of greater role rigidity.
mBank has launched an incubator to test out new ideas and to encourage collaboration with start-ups. This link helps Krzysztof expose his staff to both traditional and emerging business environments. He also sees value in extracting experiences from older workforce and passing knowledge to younger employees.
Krzysztof says effective CIOs should be on a par with business colleagues. He believes IT should generate the necessary flow of new ideas to help the businesses cope with challenges and opportunities. It took him two years to understand the finance business when he arrived at mBank from a non-financial career. Yet he says banks are not dissimilar to other organisations when it comes to their levels of complexity. Legacy is a universal problem that all CIOs must tackle.
His mantra, which has helped him move from CIO and CTO to COO, is to give people space to come up with new ideas. It’s vital that CIOs trust and support their people.
