Veteran AMP CIO steps down

Long-serving AMP chief information officer Lee Barnett has announced her retirement after 12 years holding the top tech job.

The bank has already found a replacement from within Barnett’s team, naming former product and advice IT director Craig Ryman to replace her.

Ryman will officially step up to the mark on 1 January, 2015.

Ryman has also had a long career at AMP, having joined in 1997. He rose to the IT director level in 2009 and has served the IT needs of the advice and banking, insurance and superannuation divisions in the years since.

AMP chief Craig Meller thanked Barnett for her years in the CIO role, including her work on the $220 million IT merger of the A/NZ wing of investment bank AXA, which AMP acquired in 2011, plus the split out of AMP’s UK business.

“Lee Barnett has been instrumental in helping to shape AMP’s transformation of our core Australian business,” he said in a statement. “We wish her well.”

More recently, the bank has sought to shake up its 20 year outsourcing partnership with CSC.

Ryman outlined plans late last year to force CSC to compete for select areas of IT work to aid AMP’s quest to save $200 million in operational costs.

Barnett’s retirement continues a wave of CIO departures in the Australian banking sector. The most senior technology leadership roles at Commonwealth Bank, Macquarie, ANZ, Westpac, NAB, Suncorp, CUA and ING Direct all turned over in the past 12 months.