The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is on the hunt for a new chief information officer following the departure of Gayan Benedict.
Acting in the CIO role on an interim basis is deputy head of IT Stephen Smith, whilst a permanent replacement is sought.
Benedict announced his departure on LinkedIn after more than three years as CIO and a total of eight-and-a-half years in total with the central bank.
He said that during his time with the RBA, it has “realised the potential of digital government banking and real-time payments, and implemented a national economic response to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
“I joined early in the last decade to establish a strategic technology architecture and governance capability and leave having had the privilege of leading the bank’s technology function,” Benedict said.
“It's an IT function comprised of some of the best delivery, architecture, risk, operations, infrastructure, innovation, development and security teams in the country.”
Benedict said the RBA’s IT team had “modernised core banking platforms, delivered national real-time payments infrastructure and supported the robotics and manufacturing integration needed for our next-gen banknote release.”
Benedict added his team had also “provided policy support to oversee the introduction of emerging technologies throughout the Australian financial system.”
The RBA’s modernisation efforts were a declared a finalist in the iTnews Benchmark Awards 2020.
Before taking on the CIO position, Benedict first joined the RBA as a senior IT manager before taking on the role of deputy head of information technology in late 2014.
Prior to the RBA, Benedict worked at Westpac for over five years in various positions including head of strategy and enterprise architecture. He also led Westpac’s technology strategy team.
He has also previously served as director of global payments at foreign exchange company Travelex and held IT roles at Oracle.
