Fergal Coburn, chief technology officer at AIB, began his career spending five years as an electronics engineer before moving on to Network Support Systems development with Eircom. “So you could say the interest in technology has always really been there,” he explains.
Having joined AIB in 2001 as Telecoms Services manager, six years later he commenced the roll-out of a new world of internet-based banking. “That led me into the next 12 years of direct banking, self-service banking, customer analytics, digital products, cards and payments, retail transformation and finally to where I am today as the Chief Technology Officer. I feel like I’ve had five different careers in AIB, working with people and teams from all fields but the engineer in me never really left, he just wore different hats over the years.”
As chief technology officer, Coburn plays a critical role on the leadership team of the bank, with direct responsibility for the technology, digital banking, data and analytics and cyber functions. “I work with the Executive Committee shaping our strategic ambition and how we deliver our customers’ needs while ensuring that AIB’s technology remains ahead of the curve and keeping our systems available 24/7,” he says.
AIB is a significant pillar in the Irish economy, Coburn notes, with some 50 per cent of salaries paid through the bank. They also process in excess of 60 million debit authorisation transactions every month and have 1.85 million digitally-active customers. “Logins to the mobile app regularly exceed one million per day with mobile payments regularly exceeding 150,000 daily. That gives a sense of the scale of the job.”
AIB currently has a workforce of 2,500 within its technology function alone, and it is growing. “We are recruiting at present across all technology disciplines to ensure we have the workforce we need now, and into the future. We are implementing new technologies and we need to ensure that our workforce is constantly growing their skills and experience in line with this.”