Paul To, CIO of Hang Seng Bank, shares his firm's leveraging of technology to meet customer needs and human capital challenges facing his team.

CWHK: Why did you choose IT as a career?

Paul To: I'm interested in technology and the IT industry offered many opportunities in the 80s. I started out as a consultant and eventually moved into the banking sector because banks are heavy users of IT. I've been with the HSBC Group for over 20 years and became head of IT at Hang Seng Bank in 1995.

CWHK: What are some current IT projects at the bank?

PT: One of our major moves is the development of a fourth generation (4G) e-banking platform that allows us to easily build new services and features across different OSs and devices.

Mobile tech development has kept us busy. In 2007 we started to jump onto the mobile bandwagon by introducing browser-based securities trading, foreign exchange margin trading, and general banking services. Last year--with the help of Hong Kong-based mobile marketing apps developer and designer Cherrypicks--we launched Hong Kong's first iPhone app for foreign exchange margin trading and market information. The app's had 110,000 downloads times and average weekly page views hit two million--it's well designed and easy-to-use.

The mobile scene has moved fast since then--Android's market share is catching up while the iPad becomes increasingly popular. We need to create a similar look-and-feel [of our e-banking services] across different platforms and devices including desktops. While there's an increasing number of customers using our services via mobile devices, many still use desktops to access our services.

But this multi-platform initiative will stretch our resources even thinner. To shorten the development cycle for the next three years and optimize our resources, we decide to adopt HTML 5--as part of the 4G e-banking platform--to enable ourselves to deliver new features such as multi-touch and motion sensing [on different devices]. So in addition to smartphone apps, we will also develop browser-based services for users of different devices with HTML 5.

CWHK: What percentage of transactions is done via mobile devices at Hang Seng?

PT: The number of our e-banking customers is around 1.2 million, with more than 75 percent of securities trading, [more than] 90 percent of yellow form IPO subscription (see side bar), and [more than] 85 percent of foreign exchange margin trading completed on our e-banking platform. Around 10 percent of the e-banking related transactions are done via mobile devices.

CWHK: New tech projects in 2012?

PT: Projects related to RMB products and compliance. But I can't give you more details.

CWHK: What are the challenges facing you as a tech leader in a bank?

PT: IT security, cost management, efficiency enhancement, keeping up with changes in technologies, and aligning tech changes with business needs are priorities and challenges as well.

CWHK: How has the role of IT changed in Hang Seng bank in the past five to 10 years?

PT: IT has changed from a passive operation to a proactive one that understands business and customers. Now we need an idea of what users might need even before requirement collection--we achieve this by keeping up with the trends in the banking sector instead of just honing our tech skills.

CWHK: What are the challenges facing you when it comes to recruitment and tech talent cultivation?

PT: We are one of the largest fresh graduate employers in Hong Kong, having recruited those young people every year over the past eight to ten years. We actually employ more fresh tech grads than experienced pros--and provide them with both learning opportunities through project participation and classroom training.

Unlike other companies who shy away from hiring graduates, we believe there are types of work that junior people will find interesting. Cost-wise, hiring graduates to do certain types of work makes more sense than delegating these tasks to existing workers with more experience. In terms of professional development, I believe pros with more experience should move on to more challenging work instead of doing the same things for too long.

But we have had a harder time hiring [fresh graduates] since last year. The ongoing trend of outsourcing means there are fewer opportunities--this is one of the major reasons why fewer young people are interested in studying IT and choosing IT as a career.

From an employer's perspective, it takes at least three years to train a new employee. So the current shortage affects us and all firms looking to hire tech pros. In addition, our existing IT employees are targets for businesses from different sectors.

In the banking sector alone, there's an intense competition for tech talent as more foreign banks, mainland banks, and "iBanks" come to Hong Kong to establish their presence. New products such as RMB trade also create demand for IT pros with banking experiences because banks develop systems in-house for these products.

CWHK: What skills and personalities do you look for when hiring IT pros?

PT: There's no shortage of people with tech skills--teenagers today are so tech-savvy that they are already familiar with Java when finishing secondary school. What I look for are responsible people who understand the importance of accuracy because our businesses are customer-facing and involve a lot of money. We also have so many systems that we can't just leave them to testing staff to find out the bugs--we need people who see quality as the top priority from the beginning of building a system.

What are Yellow form IPOs

While investors can use either the white or yellow form to subscribe new shares, the white form subscribers--with physical shares to be issued in their names--can only start trading after receiving the share certificates and having them deposited with brokers. But these investors might miss the first trading day if they don't receive the certificates before trading of the new shares begin.

Yellow form subscribers can rest assured that they can trade stocks through their brokers on the first trading day as the allotted shares of these subscribers have already been deposited into Central Clearing and Settlement System (CCASS) implemented by the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) (www.hkex.com.hk).

Source: HKEx