Bank of Ireland chief operating officer Jackie Noakes quits

Bank of Ireland's chief operating officer, Jackie Noakes, has handed in her notice after 3½ years with the group. Her future plans are unknown.

Group chief executive Francesca McDonagh told staff in an email this week that Ms Noakes, who took on an expanded role in 2019, taking charge of the bank’s €1.15 billion IT transformation programme, will leave at the end of March.

The chief executive has decided to split Ms Noakes’s role into two positions, those of a chief technology and payments officer and transformation director.

She has hired Enda Johnson, a former head of corporate affairs and strategy at AIB who joined what is now known as Virgin Money in 2015, as her transformation head.

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The group will undertake an internal and external search for a technology and payments chief.

“Jackie has played a key role in delivering bank-wide transformation. This has included enhancements to the group’s information security management and cyberrisk protection measures, implementation of strategic solutions for payments and cards, as well as achieving the significant milestone of launching our new digital mobile channel, enabling over 75 per cent of all product applications to be fulfilled digitally,” said Ms McDonagh. “These foundations will underpin what we do for our customers in the years ahead.”

Ms Noakes took on the IT overhaul project in 2019 after the then head of the massive exercise of overhauling the group's ageing banking system, Steve Collier, quit suddenly after just 18 months in the role.

Budget policy

While the IT programme had several milestone issues between its 2016 inception and the end of last year – including a rollout of the bank's new mobile banking app, which was originally set for 2019, but delayed until the following year – Bank of Ireland has stuck rigidly to the budget.

The IT overhaul and wider restructuring – resulting in 1,700 redundancies since late 2020 – are designed to see the bank’s running expenses fall to below €1.65 billion in 2021 from €1.9 billion in 2017, the year in which Ms McDonagh took charge of the group. The bank has set its sights in cutting its costs to €1.5 billion in 2023, much of it flowing from the recent job cuts.

“We have recognised the need to further mature how we deliver enterprise change at Bank of Ireland. This is not just about IT change, it is about bank wide change, skills and capabilities,” said Ms McDonagh in the staff email this week. “It is about increasing our agility, reducing risk, and delivering our strategy for the benefit of our customers and colleagues.

“This is a personal priority for me in 2022. As well as a new way of delivering change, we need to take advantage of evolving technology and innovation in our industry.”