Bluestone appoints chief technology officer

Bluestone has appointed former Nimble Australia executive Jason Barry as its new chief technology officer (CTO), effective 9 December.

According to the lender, Mr Barry will lead the implementation of core platform upgrades and technology enhancements in a bid to deliver “user-oriented” broker and customer experiences.

Mr Barry has over 20 years of international experience as a senior technologist, in areas such as platform and data engineering and organisational transformation.

He was most recently at fintech and alternative lender Nimble Australia where he was chief digital and innovation officer.

Mr Barry has also consulted and worked in the US, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with brands such as Amazon, eBay, US insurance group Anthem, Standard Bank in South Africa, and Danske Bank in Denmark.

Commenting on his appointment, Bluestone CEO Campbell Smith said: “Jason’s appointment is extremely exciting for Bluestone, as his experience will drive delivery of large-scale technology projects which will have a profound effect on the experience our brokers and customers will have when working with us, and enable our employees to work more effectively and collaboratively.”

Mr Campbell also thanked Russell Nelms, who acted as interim CTO until Mr Barry’s appointment while also holding the role of head of transformation enterprise project management office (EPMO).

“Under his leadership, our technology function has celebrated significant milestones under the challenging environment 2020 provided, including the complete transition of employees across three countries to work from home, and the rollout of a new hardship and collections tool that helped our service teams to proactively assist customers experiencing hardship due to COVID-19,” Mr Campbell said.

Mr Nelms acted as interim CTO when Phil Gray departed from the role (previously called chief information officer) in February 2020 to pursue other opportunities, according to Bluestone.

[Related: Bluestone reinstates 90% LVR product]

Malavika Santhebennur is the features editor on the mortgages titles at Momentum Media.

Before joining the team in 2019, Malavika held roles with Money Management and Benchmark Media. She has been writing about financial services for the past six years.