CIO Leadership Live with Frankie Shuai, Former Director Cyber and Technology Risk at UBS
hello and welcome my name is Chris Holmes editor at large for CIO and I will be your host today I'm pleased to be talking to Frankie shway former director of cyber and Technology risk at UBS as part of our Tech leaders in conversation discussion so Frankie thanks ever so much for joining us today so there's really three areas we want to discuss the first one is your career you know and how you've actually become to be a tech leader and also to get into that sort of um uh the jump you made from being on the technology vendor side to actually joining financial institutions become you know on the end user side secondly to really talk about technology management and third to talk about people leadership so maybe you can just start by giving us a little bit of background about your career to begin with sex Grace first of all I will say thank you the Aggies key here or receive your RCL award in 2012 well with the director of cyber Integris UBS and prior to that I was also with Citibank Microsoft and HP so all in all I have about 20 years that was leadership experience in both I.T and the financial industry so let me share where I am today and where I started so academically my education background actually was engineering background I studied my bachelor degree in electric Engineering in National University of Singapore here and I'm a master's degree also in the same field from Nyan Technological University here so the good thing about the university system in Singapore here is the education is a very broad actually coverage so that even as engineering students we have a lot to explore to the computer to the I.T from the software programming to the computer networking so that's why it's quite a seamless experience for us to join the I.T world after graduation so after joined I.T world for a few years actually I grow and learn quite a lot from
the system design to the project management from Team Management to the external client engagement obviously that kind of experience is very useful and benefit me until today not just on the tagrangi side but also the experience on the people engagement people engage with both internal stakeholders and external clients as well after span a few years in the IQ work I am fortunate to join I.T to the financial industry still artillery the first bank I joined it was Citibank so just now you asked about the difference between actually the it and financial industry obviously let me share one quote here what was in Citibank at the time our group CEO Michael shared one statement it is Citibank is not a bank it is I.T company with banking license so this statement is aspiring so yes it's true a lot of variety Industries actually after a lot of I.T industry talents they have moved away from I.T to the financial and still leverage whatever the expertise they have built in argue world and a lot of actually the banks of financial institutions they have hired so many other talents in Singapore and in the region here and financial industry is also a large actually player to adopt new type range from old days the ATM machine to online banking from Mobile Banking to the high focus Trading from the blockchain asset tokenization to the machine learning AI usage all this kind of actually the new use case and the Showcase of how financial industry has been adopted new technology as you may know sorry sorry let me just uh frankly that's very very interesting that that's great to hear so I'm also interested as to what got you interested in security okay great question as you may know ID has many sub domains security is part of it I mean there's an interesting area we have seen a lot of actually the tech service has been expanded when the whole world entered the digital world going to the digital transformation especially during the past few years during Korea pandemic time people are working from anywhere using any device at any time connect to a network the internet what so-called Triple A so the involving of the technology from cloud computing to AI from blockchain to Quantum Computing on one side creates a new opportunity new use case but on the site including more digital touch points increase more attack service that's why as a subsequent professionals we're more busy than ever it's interesting but challenging areas but on another side there's also more sophisticated cyber attacks in the past few years there's no denying that while we're on the digital transformation Journey actually does better guys they also own their digital transformation Journey they may also use AI machine learning to as actually as a weapon to make their attack is more personalized to you many years ago you may receive one fishing email type to you took you to go to some fake website provide a login or no credential that may be written by a real guy sitting in front of a PC type the email to you nowadays all this work actually could be done by robotics got it but could be powered by the AI and machine learning and this is true that we can study you very well they will do personalization study on you to connect all your networks around you connect your personal life in a professional experience so that make this kind of the email fishing email very personalized to you this is called spearfishing so so that we have to tackle this kind of increase challenge fantastic so I don't I don't want to ask you who's winning whether it's the attackers or whether it's the security uh because I think that's just going to be a constant battle that we're going to see going on for uh well forever really but um I think you bring up some very interesting points there and it's a nice segue into our next conversation which is really about managing new technology I mean we've seen you mentioned sort of quantum Computing you mentioned uh AI you know we've got uh chat GPT we've got generative AI all over the news as we as we as as we speak today um you know how do you as a technology leader a technology professional really decide which Technologies are worthwhile investigating and investing in um for your organization okay thanks for the question so is enabler and it's shipping our future so it is runtime now it is not just a it's it is not tomorrow it is today that adopts new technology that's one thing that if you cannot beat your anime you will be either part of them or be part of them so that you can win them so this is actually the game this kind of the win-win game here so adopt a new Target since I'm in the financial industry people might think financial industry is a slow adapter of new technology so there's a big art Innovation actually it's not from financial industry it is not true look at the ATM machine it was invented 50 years ago by the financial industry Citibank was the first global bank at the time largely deported the First ATM machine networks in the New York City in U.S and in the past 50 years it has bring a huge convenience for the
people and ask your grandfather grandmother in the old days how they deal with those cash elements after the salary building they have to rush to the bank branch to kill for the long queue to get the money out pay the bill and remember in the old days those are bank branch is not operating 24x7 and there's a limited number of branches in the city so the coming the inconvenience is there with the invention of ATM machine people could easily do the cash deposit cash withdrawal Bank challenge or discover the basic Financial transactions at any machine you do not have to rush to the branch people nowadays people may think oh ATM still is old everything we're doing is online we're using smartphone we use the application we can do stimulus payment seamless transaction but do not forget in the past 50 years how much more convenience ATM machine has brought to us has brought to the financial industry this is just one example and similarly like the first generation iPhone Apple has generated or the current the LGBT integration the real value has bring to us so all this kind of disruptive technology has really bring the new value do actually the market entry for us and not just it but also financial industry as well let's look at the chuck gbt we have accumulated 100 million users within two months to reach this kind of 100 million users for digital they have spent nine months for Instagram they have spent two and a half years so now back to the question as a leader how do we identify and I keep up with this kind of new attack range simple advice I could think of is just do not go for something because of eating something here something could be any buzzwords cloud blockchain or captivity still have to find the relevant value behind the religious case you could adopt new organization then look into how to integrate these kind of things into your whole ecosystem who organization may claim okay we have x y z percentage of our systems and data on the cloud where the leader in the cloud migration another organization say no we are the creation we built everything from cloud main mucus of the cloud advantage of the AI the machine learning robotics automation so actually there's a difference of these two kinds of the organization for the first one I shared one real actually practical example here we know for the ID systems under one system there are many sub components from database to web server from the production stance to test instance you may just put one component out of the kind of components of this system into the cloud while remaining 99 still remain on premise you claim oh my system is cloud on the cloud yes it's true but the fact is you still have 99 of the workloads on premise you have to still have to do cut those cut off to the actually the traditional work maintenance on your traditional database on a traditional Data Center and there's a great additional actually the change for you to manage the data communication on the cloud an office Cloud encryption and decryption and all kinds of things so you have not really unlock the value of cloud computing could bring to you that's actually the the collaborative Advantage like the automation data analytics all this you have not fully utilized so that's one thing about Cloud migration the proper planning another thing about cost management although customer supplier may tell you their usage the the building model is payers usage you just pay whatever you have put on running on account sounds great but do a dirty leader will surely have to sit up look at all the things that are put on the cloud whether if we are still running but there's if there's no business value behind There's No Business case your ideal resource is just running for itself that's a waste of money that's why your CFO may come to you every month why your Club bill is so high why is keep increasing you have to justify you have to break it down tell yourself your karma question is really bring the economic value to the organization it's not just go for cloud because it is a cloud same thing not only apply for the term migration but also for other things like blockchain token addition like HTTP integration you really have to sit down and find the real use case and then scale up by modus case for the organization really bring the value to your business to your clients increase the CX ux increase CX means for you customer experience ux means internal employee use experience so that you people will really think technology department right department is enabler it's partner for them it's not just okay help desk or showstopper or call center so very interesting there so I mean how do you how do you yourself keep abreast of those newer Technologies I mean you know um did you go out and listen to seminars do you do you um you know regularly engage with vendors and get them to update you on what's going on I mean how how do you actually identify what are those technologies that you should be looking at and considering for me personally I always believe sharing is learning leadership is not Silo so I I would like to make use of time it's not the back time because we know we're all busy because of fragmented time slots try to rate those cards that are new articles and new blocks to understand what the things going on what are people getting the people's eye and what's the the use case they have actually the same industry the link to my daily work that's very important the linkage to my dinner work and I think whether it could be adopt partially or fully and talk to my partners they hold us in a complaint as well as my pattern networks in the industry so that it's a two-way communication so that share whatever I have learned whatever experience also listen to them what's up good story use case they have shared so that as a community so we could grow together well very interesting and then that brings me into the conversation around actually bringing that new technology into into the road map you know and actually making sure that that road map you know is taking in the uh the business requirements but it's also having that sort of the the the newer Technologies coming in and again we we we're starting to see a lot more conversation around this idea around sort of um you know business pull so business saying we want to be able to achieve these particular use cases but even more so this idea of Technology push where we start to see newer Technologies enabling different use cases and the business may not have actually considered so how do you organize that and manage that uh in in your in your experience so this is a two-way communication traditionally actually it's a one-way Communication business we have the use case then they will have the FID functional requirements documentation passed to the it the I.T based on business requirements we come out ik design plan then we do the development testing then roll out let's say traditional workflow project management model but now more cases we have seen is another way which means especially for this kind of new Target to come to the picture is I.T the adopts new targets they do some sandbox then find some use case then they sell internally to the business user saying okay there's something new so we would may need to spend more money this is a small use case in the sandbox we do some demonstration to you see whether it can fit into our business ecosystem to come up with a new business product a new business model so that most of time business partners they work quite Keen to listen and attend this kind of seminars and Conference in the dialogue with it partners because they know actually if just using the current actually the I.T technology I think infrastructure whatever the business product is actually is horizontal or maybe this kind of growth minia grows if you want to have exponential growth or break through learning you need to find some new times could bring the value to you that's why they also want to listen and sit down with the ID patterns that's why I see this kind of two-way communication more and more happening now excellent excellent yeah and I think that's a very interesting point about looking for that um well let's call it transformational growth you know the digital transformation uh Journey that so many organizations are actually on but I think there's also something um again you talked about the 2A conversation something about the the education side of things as well because again there's a lot of hype out there as to what the Technologies are capable of and again I've been seeing a lot of conversations been involved in a lot of conversations which is really talking about uh talking to the business about what the technology is capable of but also what the technology is not capable of there's that kind of Education yes great so to not be too negative so we have to acknowledge the constraints but let's turn try to see not just talk what cannot be done we talk to business it's more like what can be done how it can be done it's more to get the engagement it's more positive and another thing actually I can share here is about the shift the mindset shift for our artist leaders from the project-based it management or planning to the business product or Business Service Focus ID planning um personally I'm not against the typical IIT project management actually maybe you know I was a vice president of project management Institute Singapore chapter so PMI actually is a global Institute to issue the PMP certification which is the most recognized actually programming during specification worldwide so um a restaurant advocate of project management but since has been changed solution has been changed we cannot just always just look at okay time cost Rock IG red Amber growing status of the project then to the dashboard to the plantation to the management that's the always ID project leaders they used to do to balance I'm also part of the a few years ago but nowadays as I said the world is changing and for the business the product time to Market is very short time we have to be at jail we have to be nimble we have to do more with less so that as it leaders we should think how our ID project is put into the Business site are more aligned to their product and service and how to increase the ux user experience or CX client experience I know it's hard to measure all the things we're doing is unlike the old ways to do the project management but the more you can do discover the linkage and the more language you speak in the shoes of your business partners or and clients the more easy you will get actually the conversation with them and it's more easy later on when you want to plan for your ID budget so it's the change effect here so we really have to think out of our box how to move our our let's say not just the it guys only we should be part of the eye business support nowadays so much more integrated much more chemically connected yeah yeah absolutely and it's something I'm I'm hearing a lot so I'm hearing a lot of conversations around this how to break down those barriers and how to have that integration I mean it's interesting as soon as we talk about it there's almost a barrier being drawn around that but we're actually saying we need to move beyond that yes so Frankie um just coming on to the third part of our conversation and that's about um leadership in the in this uh uh period of uncertainty I mean you know the the banking the financial industry is going through some um challenges literally again as we speak I mean just in the last week two weeks there's been a a a bit of concern across the across the industry so you know how have how have you as a technology leader you know kept the team focused kept the team motivated thanks for the question so to balance is challenging nowadays it's not just IT industry it is overall worth so there's certain things we cannot control we have to acknowledge exactly leader for example we can forecast the interest rate by the way cannot control the interest rate right how much the best point they won't increase but within our boundary as I teach us there are a lot of things we can do so first is mindset change I know a lot of people will describe us as a manager it manager nothing wrong about this description of management but I would more prefer the world leader leader I.T leader it's more for me it's more important than
it manager why for the manager it's more like the top down approach okay you get the direction or instruction from the top layer by layer Cascade down tell the ground staff to do certain projects then just focus on exclusion that is a top-down that is the always the management but for the leader the leadership actually is a two-way you have the top down approach communication but you also have the Baltimore approach bottom feedback and then you have the strong team body and you have the actually The Continuous feedback continuous appreciation to your staff by the way this patient appreciation should not be just once a year before the year and Appraisal it should be continuous Journey during the project at the end of project beginning of the projects anytime once I stopped doing something great doing something actually achieved beyond your Expedition you should not should not actually be silent you should be more energetic and should cheer this kind of achievements from stuff another thing at the leader we should do is as a translator good leader is a good translator to translate your company's Mission creation strategy to the ground staff's execution so that the ground staff they will feel powerful they will feel whatever they do on a daily basis is part of the big picture they know their contribution is part of the group achievement in the direct way or indirect way so this kind of the communication and the feedback is very important another thing is about the training training it's we know that leader every year we have to spend some time on the budget for the training for the staff training for the technology training or soft skill training so do not constrain ourselves into the classroom training those kind of formal training only there's one famous rule in the industry about it's called 70 20 and 10 rule is means effective training is most of 70 percent OJT and job training 20 mentorship informal training and the remaining 10 percent is a formal trading either in the classroom or online led by the professional trainer so make use of these all kinds of trainings not just the last 10 percent but the first 10 70 10 so that Empower your staff to do this kind of the job training Explorer such as on the technology side but on a soft skill side so that it could even be more resilient be relevant especially in the current uncertainty environment and the last but not least and the leader and we should also take care of our staffs in the cares not just physicals but also the mental health and the leader we should set our own self as a good example so I may be not a good example about some in some business experience I can share is I like the Outdoor Sports so it really makes me feel energetic during the work and take away the stress to a certain extent and I'm also the actually the Asia highest jump finisher a few years ago so that's really make me associate energetic Network so when I face the next couple of challenge that's fantastic thank you yeah and I think there's some uh very uh very uh good ideas and good tips and again I think that that one of actually um the staff mirroring how you actually act um that's much more powerful than being told what to do um so yeah so Frankie thank you ever so much we've come to the end of today's conversation again I'd like to just you know say thank you for sharing your career Journey you know your your thoughts and thinking on how to sort of manage technology going forward and also your guidance on leading in this uh era of uncertainty my name's Chris Holmes I'm editor at large for asean CIO and I've been talking to Frankie schwa as part of our leadership in Technology Series if anyone's got any questions or comments please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn
2023-04-19 12:32
