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The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has announced that its group executive for technology and group chief information officer, Gavin Munroe, will leave the bank next month.
Munroe, who is reportedly leaving the bank to “explore other opportunities outside the bank”, will step down from CBA’s leadership team on 22 December. It is not yet known where he is going.
Munroe first joined CBA’s executive leadership team in 2022, when he assumed the position vacated by Pascal Boillat.
Since taking on the role, Munroe has helped CBA build its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, including helping shape the bank’s work in “reimagining banking” using AI, while strengthening cyber resilience and fraud detection.
Confirming Munroe’s departure, CBA CEO Matt Comyn commented: “Since Gavin joined the bank, CBA has accelerated our technology modernisation program and strengthened our AI capabilities.
“Over the past three years, we have increased the pace of technology delivery while reducing operational incidents. To leverage cloud capabilities, we completed the full upgrade and migration of our SAP Core Banking platform to AWS – the largest system-of-record migration in our history.”
Comyn flagged that CBA was recently ranked among the world’s top four banks for AI maturity (in an index from intelligence platform Evident) and had established its own tech hub in Seattle to “continue building world-class AI and engineering talent and expertise”.
CBA employees are also progressively getting access to OpenAI’s advanced AI tools, including its enterprise-grade AI solution, ChatGPT Enterprise, and the bank is investing in training and upskilling programs to increase AI capability and embed the responsible use of AI across its workforce.
Comyn continued: “Looking ahead, we will continue to execute our established technology strategy and embed the use of AI throughout the organisation with the aim to drive better experiences for customers.
“We thank Gavin for his contribution and wish him well for the future.”
In the interim, two new leaders will lead the technology function, reporting to CEO Comyn.
Rodrigo Castillo (currently the group chief technology officer at CBA) will become the bank’s CIO for central technology, and Victoria Ledda (currently CIO for retail and wealth banking) will become CBA’s CIO for business technology. The duo will co-lead the technology function, subject to regulatory approval.
CBA has been placing an increasing focus on its technology and digital transformation as it looks to digital distribution advantage to help drive “increasing returns to scale”.
However, the major bank has lost several senior members in recent months to competitor major banks.
In the past year alone, senior leaders who have left Australia’s largest lender include: Carli Renzi (former managing director in CBA’s institutional bank); Alex Toone (CBA’s former executive general manager, commodities, trade, and carbon); Paul Fowler (CBA’s former executive general manager, regional and agribusiness); Andrew McMullan (CBA’s former chief data and analytics officer); and David Watts (CBA’s former executive general manager, quant, data, analytics, and technology), who have all moved to Westpac.
[Related: CBA chief joins Westpac to drive digital transformation]