Moving the Dial (Nov 2018)

“My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change the industry are both the thinker-doer in the same person” (Jobs, 1990). As CIO of HF Group, part of my charge has been to create the vision, direction, and delivery program for the company's digital transformation agenda. This requires me to find a balance between advancing ideas that deliver on the evolving business needs, high customer expectations while delivering on shareholder value. In tandem, I must ensure that core operations remain stable and do not deter us from focusing on the strategic objectives.

Great thinking alone cannot move the dial, one must be willing to roll up their sleeves and get the job done amidst the pressure of budget constraints, cyber security threats, and intense competition within the industry. This pressure is further augmented by new players like fintechs who are not saddled by some of the legacy challenges faced by incumbents.

HF Group (formerly Housing Finance Corporation of Kenya) is one of the institutions that was severely impacted by enactment of the interest capping bill in August 2016, mainly because of the organizations traditional focus on the real estate sector. For over 50 years, HF Group had positioned itself as the leading mortgage provider in Kenya and had successfully captured a big market share. However, the market dynamics had significantly changed; with interest income suppressed, the organizations profit margin had drastically contracted and the “Rock of Kenya” was on the brink of an uncertain future.

A few weeks after the bill was signed, I was hired as HF’s Chief Information Officer. It was the first time that the organization elevated the ICT Division to a seat at the “Big Table”. Digital Banking was at the centre of my transformation mandate and I set out to turn HFC into a market leader in Digital Financial Services (DFS). The journey began by crafting a digital banking proposition that would soon become the main initiative to lift HF out this predicament. This required selling the vision, stakeholder engagement, acquisition of new skills and quick deployment. The vision was shared in the early part of 2017 where it was one of five key strategic initiatives meant to address our performance challenges. The development begun in August 2017, with the aim of not only entering the digital banking space but being amongst the top three players by end of 2018.

Unlike most DFS solutions that focus on Services and Products, our platform - HF Whizz focuses on “Use Cases” and delivering the ultimate User Experience – “Fast and Simple Banking at the Speed of your Lifestyle”. The six use cases being addressed are how people Get, Spend, Borrow, Store, Invest and Protect money.

Our new DevOps program and agile delivery methodology are tailored to respond to market insights and customer demands while ensuring optimum stability and security. The platform is under 24/7 monitoring at our Security Operations Centre (SOC) that is constantly being upgraded with new scenarios to ensure that the customer and organizations’ assets are protected from internal and external threats.

Since going live at the end of July 2018, we have executed seven major changes on the platform recording an average downtime of less than four-minutes per change. This has never resulted in an outage of the entire platform but of the particular capability being upgraded, because we incorporated micro services into the build from the onset. We have leveraged the power of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data to make lending decisions and issue mobile loans to virtual customers in less than 7 seconds.

By adopting a cloud-first philosophy, we have accelerated our speed to market with lower hardware expenses so as to channel more resources to solution development. Unlike many organizations that are deploying private clouds, our solution runs on public cloud (Microsoft Azure) which gives us an array of new capabilities like orchestration, service monitoring and auto scaling across multiple global data centres.

This success is not the result of a single individuals efforts. I have the honor of working with a gender and generationally diverse team that believe in themselves and in our ability to jointly chart a new path for HF. It is their relentless focus on our cause, faith in our capabilities and fortitude to soldier on through challenges that gives me strength in those low moments faced when taking on the status quo. As their leader, my role is to empower and motivate each member of the team thrive in their element and deliver their best.

If I can chronicle the last two years in terms of focus, 2017 was about thinking and casting the vision, while 2018 was about execution and responding to the market. However, the thinking and vision casting never stops, as that is what keeps us all aligned and focused on the big goals despite many challenges. Part of this involves building trust and keeping your ego in check by giving new team members the opportunity and support to redefine the roadmap.

Having stretched beyond the traditional CIO mandate to lead this initiative, I’m pleased that it’s uptake has exceeded our expectations by expanding the HF retail customer base from 50,000 to nearly 200,000 new customers in 3 months since its commercial launch.

As the influence and relevance of the CIO brand grows, I bear the weight of adding credibility to those that went before me, so as not to jeopardize the legitimacy of future CIOs, who seek the chance to define and lead business transformation. This narrative is meant to challenge Boards and CEOs to begin seeing CIOs as Business Leaders not just techies. If my small contribution to this cause moves the dial, then that will be success.