Inside the sweeping IT restructure at Teachers Mutual Bank

Teachers Mutual Bank has undertaken a department-wide restructure of its IT operations division to reskill its workers for new technologies and to enable the IT shop to meet the increasing demands of the business.

Last week’s restructure - which directly impacted one-third of TMB’s 60-strong IT ops team and saw one person made redundant and two choose to depart - involved a complete overhaul of teams, reporting lines, and individual job responsibilities.

The IT operations division is one of two to report into chief information officer Dave Chapman, alongside the enterprise portfolio.

A “comprehensive review” of all IT job descriptions was undertaken to make sure TMB could properly service the new technologies it had introduced in recent years, and future technology to come.

The six managers that report into the head of IT operations all experienced some level of role and responsibility changes (two new operational divisions, service management and security, were introduced), promotions were made, and IT security was centralised.

The remit of TMB’s retail banking systems group was also expanded to cover all enterprise applications, not just the Ultracs core banking platform.

CIO Dave Chapman told iTnews the restructure was intended to better align IT to the needs of the bank and shore the unit up for the future.

“Our old structures worked OK, but they were starting to creak under the load of meeting increased BAU operational demands as well as delivering to an aggressive technology innovation agenda,” he said.

“Our loans growth is more than double the market average at the moment and we’ve just completed another merger so we have another brand (Firefighters Mutual Bank) to support.

“We have to keep up with the organisation’s demands by continuing to change to respond to and to provide excellent service to the whole TMBL group.”

Centralising security

A new IT security manager is currently being recruited to lead the centralised infosec portfolio, which has pulled all security functions - everything from access provisioning to delivery of TMB’s new three-year enterprise security roadmap - into one location.

Security functions were previously spread across multiple divisions and didn’t necessarily co-ordinate well.

Chapman said this new approach would enable security to be better managed at an enterprise-wide level and ensure it is being applied consistently across the organisation.

“The threat landscape is clearly increasing, so we need better visibility of what we’re doing both internally and externally to manage that properly and, most importantly, to do all we can to minimise the risk to our banking environment generally and to our member data specifically from external threats,” he said.

New skills

Part of the intention of the restructure was to create better opportunities for upskilling, Chapman said.

TMB recently capped off its Dell Boomi integration project, the final piece of the bank’s years-long core overhaul.

The introduction of new technologies like the Boomi integration cloud require the right in-house skills to service them, Chapman said.

Under the restructured IT ops division, “roles and the people that fill them are now designed not just to support each other, but to complement each other”.

“A person working with someone else on a related function within IT from this point on will be expected to understand and learn enough of the job of that colleague to be able to communicate constructively at all times rather than have gaps in understanding,” Chapman said.

“Longer term this will help in succession planning and management of key person risk by having a workforce who have multiple resources at hand with skills in multiple domains.

“That means training plans, training budgets and an active focus for both management and staff on ensuring we deliver on this to and for our people, which we are committed to do.”