NAB looks abroad for new Chief Security Officer, Zurich appoints Country CEO to jointly lead its General Insurance and Life arms, and Judo loses its CISO following major exec rejig last month, as July sees a number of key movements across Australia’s financial services sector.

Appointments

– NAB has appointed Sandro Bucchianeri as its next Chief Security Officer.

Bucchianeri most recently served at Absa Group, a South African financial services provider, across several key security roles.

He replaces Nicholas McKenzie, who left NAB in April to take up a group CIO and CISO role at Bugcrowd, a “crowdsourced cybersecurity platform”.

McKenzie held the CSO role at NAB for almost a year, serving as global CISO for the bank for a year before that.

–  AustralianSuper has announced the promotion of Paul Schroder to Chief Executive, with long-serving chief Ian Silk set to step down from the role.

Schroder has held various senior executive roles across his 10-year tenure at Australia’s biggest super provider, including as Group Executive Strategy, Brand & Reputation, Group Executive Membership, and most recently as Chief Risk Officer.

The move follows the announcement of Chief Executive Ian Silk’s departure from the super fund after 15 years.

– Revolut Australia has announced the appointment of Daniel Travini as Head of Technology.

Formerly of neobank 86 400, Travini served in a number of senior tech roles, most recently as the neobank’s Digital Services Lead. He was among 86 400’s earliest appointees.

Travini will be tasked with driving Revolut’s strategy around information systems and security.

A notable player at eftpos Payments Australia, Travini led the team responsible for delivering eftpos’s payment tokenisation service (TSP) and ‘eftpos Hub’ – a payments technology project requiring industry-wide coordination and implementation.

Revolut has also appointed Daniel Gosarevski as Head of Lending, leading the local operations in scoping, designing and launching future lending products for the Australian franchise.

Gosarevski has served more than a decade in the lending space, including roles at Citi and HSBC.

– Insurance Australia Group (IAG) has appointed former Zurich General Insurance head Tim Plant to the newly created role of Chief Insurance and Strategy Officer. Plant is expected to join IAG before the end of the year.

– Meanwhile, Zurich Australia has announced Justin Delaney will be appointed Country Chief Executive of Australia and New Zealand, taking on Plant’s role as head of General Insurance (GI) alongside his current headship of Zurich’s Life & Investments (L&I) arm.

Zurich notes that Sean Walker, Chief Underwriting Officer of GI Australia & New Zealand, will support Delaney in the management of the GI business.

– The Commonwealth Bank has announced Chief Security Officer Brendan Goode will lead the bank’s new Group Security’ division, which integrates the bank’s “cyber, fraud, financial crime and physical security” functions.

Goode will be responsible for overseeing the design, creation, and communication of the Group’s security strategies and roadmaps to inform the delivery of critical controls and capabilities that will improve the Group’s end-to-end security posture and its ability to withstand and recover from disruption events.

– Allianz Partners Australia has appointed Christopher (Chris) McHugh as Chief Executive.

McHugh, who has spent nearly two decades within Australia’s insurance industry, most recently served as Executive General Manager, Personal Injury Insurance at Suncorp, overseeing CTP Insurance, Workers Compensation, Travel and Life portfolios. He assumes his new role on 2 August 2021.

– The BPAY Group has promoted Brittany Kury to Head of Product, an internal promotion for the former Senior Brand and Marketing Manager.

Kury will be responsible for the creation, implementation and tracking of the BPAY and Osko product roadmap.

The role also acts as Chair of the BPAY Scheme Product Committee, a cross-industry group providing input into BPAY’s product strategy as well as supporting the rollout of major product improvements, new features, and new product development.

– Allianz Australia Life Insurance has appointed Adrian Stewart as Acting Chief Executive. Stewart formerly served as PIMCO’s Head of Client Management for APAC excluding Japan.

He replaces Matthew Rady, who recently announced his departure from the Allianz Group.

– AMP Bank has appointed Paul Herbert as Head of Intermediary Distribution and Governance.

Herbert, a 25-year veteran in the broking space, most recently served as Head of Lending Distribution at MyState Bank, and prior to that, as Chief Executive at The Rock Building Society.

AMP said Herbert will be focused on driving continued mortgage growth, strengthening the Bank’s service offering for brokers and advisers, and “ensuring it continues to be easy to do business with”.

He joined AMP on 3 August 2021.

– Following the separation and rebranding of the ANZ’s investment arm, ANZi, the bank has announced Managing Director Ron Spector will continue to lead the newly named 1835i. Joining Spector will be three, as yet undisclosed, partners with backgrounds across ANZ and the start-up community.

– Great Southern Bank, formerly known as Credit Union Australia, has appointed Mathew Patterson as Head of Broker & Insurance Partnerships. Patterson has spent 20 years in the third-party mortgage industry, most recently as Head of Broker at ME Bank.

– Westpac has appointed Shannon Finch as Group General Counsel. Finch has close to 30 years corporate legal experience, with particular expertise in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, restructuring and regulatory engagement across a range of sectors, including financial services.

Finch most recently served as a senior M&A Partner at Jones Day and is a member of the Advisory Committee to the Australian Law Reform Commission for its Review of the Legislative Framework for Corporations and Financial Services.

– AIA Australia’s newly launched advice business, AIA Financial Wellbeing, has named Pina Sciarrone as its Chief Executive. Sciarrone, who has been with AIA for more than a decade, has served as General Manager of Banca, Partnerships and Advice since June last year.

– RACQ has appointed Josh Cooney as Head of Insurance Business Resilience.

Cooney most recently served at Suncorp’s Executive Manager Government, Industry & Public Policy, where he spent eight years in various roles.

– The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has appointed three new Ombudsmen from the banking and insurance sectors.

• Louise McAuliffe, currently Head of Legal, Dispute Resolution Group, at ANZ and James Taylor, Practice Leader, Business Lending Legal at Westpac will join as Ombudsmen within AFCA’s Banking and Finance team.
• David Short will join as an Ombudsman in its Insurance team. Short comes from business insurance service provider BizCover.
• AFCA has also promoted Vicki Carter and Mervyn Silverstein to Ombudsman within the Superannuation team, and Qasim Gilani to Ombudsman in Insurance.

– SuperConcepts, a self-managed super fund service owned by AMP, has appointed Grant Christensen as its permanent Chief Executive, effective 1 July 2021.

Christensen has served as SuperConcepts’ Interim Chief Executive over the past six months.

– SocietyOne has announced a number of key appointments:

• Tony MacRae, formerly Westpac and MyState Limited GM and Broking Specialist, has been appointed SocietyOne’s Chief Commercial Officer.
• Tommy Lee will step into role of Head of Broker Distribution and Business Analyst.
• Melissa Romeo will serve as the company’s Victorian Business Development Manager; and
• Mathew Chaffey has been promoted to National Business Development & Broker Support Manager.

Departures

– Judo Bank’s Chief Information Security Officer Glen Appleby has reportedly departed from the neobank. He served just over three years as CISO.

Appleby’s departure follows news last month that the neobank had scrapped its co-CEO leadership model, ushering in a raft of changes to its leadership team in preparation for an IPO listing later this year.

Judo has commenced its search for a replacement, announcing via a LinkedIn post its wants for its new “hands-on” CISO, who will be charged with maintaining Judo’s end-to-end cyber intelligence and security operations.

The role will be tasked with overseeing “strategy, security architecture, cyber risk and intelligence, security operations, program management, governance and identity and access management”.

The new CISO will report directly to the Chief Operating Officer, Lisa Frazier.

– ANZ Group’s Retail and Commercial Chief Information Officer Nicole Pelchen is set to leave the bank, joining Link Group in October.

Pelchen oversaw the technology function across ANZ’s Australian retail and commercial division.

She is set to join Link Group on October 4 as Chief Technology Officer.

– Matthew Rady, the Chief Executive of Allianz Australia Life has announced his departure from the organisation.

Rady has served as CEO of Allianz Australia Life since the creation of Allianz Retire+ in 2018. Allianz Australia Life Insurance chair David Plumb praised Rady for his “strong leadership” across his three-year tenure through the “successful transition from project to business”.

Adrian Stewart, formerly of PIMCO, will become Allianz Australia Life Insurance Acting Chief Executive.

– AustralianSuper Chief Executive, Ian Silk, will step down from the role later this year. Silk has led the super fund, Australia’s largest, since its formation 15 years ago.

Board

– Westpac has announced the appointment of Audette Exel AO as an Independent Non-executive Director, with effect from 1 September 2021.

Exel will also join Westpac’s Board Risk Committee and the Board Technology Committee following her appointment.

– Westpac New Zealand has announced Chair Jan Dawson CNZM will retire on 1 October 2021. She will be replaced by current director Pip Greenwood.

– AIA Australia has appointed Peter Yates AM as Chair of AIA Australia, with Theresa Gattung CNZM to continue leading AIA New Zealand as Chair. AIA said Gattung will now focus on the New Zealand business and other interests, following 12 years with AIA Australia after joining as Independent Director in 2009 and Chair in 2010.

– HBF has appointed Jennifer Seabrook to its Board as a Non-Executive Director. Seabrook currently serves as Chair of Deterra Royalties Limited, and Non-Executive Director of BGC Group, and Non-Executive Director of Australian Rail Track Corporation.