Former BoQ CIO lands at GE Capital Australia

Former Bank of Queensland chief information officer Julie Bale will take on the challenging task of splitting out the systems of GE Capital’s A/NZ consumer finance business after the unit was sold out from its parent in March.

Bale will take on the role of GE Capital Australia’s chief information officer on August 17 following her recent departure from BoQ, GE confirmed. She will relocate from Brisbane to Melbourne.

GE Capital A/NZ chief operating officer Greg White said Bale had the experience required to "play a critical role in navigating the journey ahead".

"Julie is a highly experienced and respected technology executive with over 25 years of experience in a range of industries, including financial services, telecommunications and utilities," he told staff on Friday.

"Julie has a strong track record in driving value outcomes around major business/technology transformation initiatives."

The role had been vacant for several months after previous CIO John Goodall left earlier this year to join Sportsbet as its head of infrastructure and enterprise technology.

A consortium including Deutsche Bank, private equity firm KKR & Co and investment manager Varde Partners agreed to buy GE Capital’s local consumer lending arm for an “enterprise value” of $8.2 billion in March.

The business offers services and products including personal loans, credit cards and interest-free retail finance.

Bale will now face the task of extricating and separating the systems of the Australian business from its GE Capital parent to allow it to operate as a standalone entity.

Bale left Bank of Queensland last month following a restructure under new CEO John Sutton.

The restructure saw IT, operations and project teams merged under a new ‘enterprise solutions’ group executive - former IAG CIO Donna Vinci - and the CIO title retired. VInci starts on July 27.

During her almost three years as CIO, Bale delivered a number of projects including an end-user computing overhaul, renegotiated deals with the bank’s long-term technology partners to obtain more value for money, and tested out an offshore-hosted Salesforce solution for CRM for an institution that had long underinvested in IT.