Harvey Koeppel, Executive Director of the Center for CIO Leadership

Episode Overview

Among other topics, Harvey discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

• How CIOs have increasingly taken on more diverse roles, transforming from a manager of a tactical IT cost center to a business savvy leader that needs to understand business strategy and processes, organization and growth, talent management, risk management, and how to capitalize on customer-related business intelligence
• The way in which CIOs remained innovative during the cost-cutting downturn by re-investing savings into innovation, focusing on core competencies, and helping diversify the business beyond local or regional dependencies
• How the differentiator between leading CIOs and average CIOs is the ability to earn a “voice at the table” beyond just a “seat at the table” by being able to communicate and contribute in business terms
• The disparity between the number of CIOs who have innovative ideas and those that actually get funded, and how that it driven by both communication abilities and getting the IT basics right
• How, while CIO of Citigroup’s Global Consumer Group, he and his team helped enhance the global customer experience by aligning IT delivery to business strategy
• Eye on the trends: The proliferation of broadband and mobile technology and how that enables the holy grail of technology: anything-anyplace-anytime; the consumerization of IT and the challenges a CIO faces by not being in full control of all technology; and the shifting dynamic of how data is no longer consider the output of an application, but rather applications are built specifically to handle large amounts of data

Harvey Koeppel’s Biography

Harvey Koeppel is Executive Director of the Center for CIO Leadership. In this capacity, Harvey sets the Center’s strategy and directs internal and external operations. He also serves as Chairman of the Center’s Advisory Committee.

From May 2004 through June 2007, Harvey served as the Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President of Citigroup’s Global Consumer Group (GCG). In that role, Harvey set the strategic direction for the GCG’s operations and technology and actively supported the development and growth of the operations and technology community across all GCG lines of business globally. Harvey served as the Chairperson of the Offshore Program Office Steering Committee and provided strategic input to GCG’s offshore and outsourcing practices. He additionally provided executive oversight to the Information Security and Data Protection programs for the Group.

Prior to taking on the CIO role, Harvey provided consulting services to CitiFinancial, Citibank and other Citi affiliates from 1986 to 2004. He was heavily involved in supporting the planning and integration of many of Citi’s major acquisitions, including Travelers Insurance, Associates First Capital, European American Bank and Golden State Bank.

Harvey has a distinguished record of IT innovation in the financial services industry. He designed the first graphical user interface for the NASDAQ trader workstation. He was the architect and designer of FxNet, a software program that revolutionized the way large financial institutions manage settlement risk within FX portfolios. He was also a primary contributor to the development of the Maestro platform at CitiFinancial, the online interface between customers, the sales force and the back office, which fundamentally changed the loan sales and approval process and significantly streamlined branch workflow. Harvey is the named inventor on the Citibank patent of the “Recommendation Engine”, a software component that advises sales and service staff about products and services to discuss with clients based upon their financial goals and objectives.

Harvey holds Bachelor degrees in Psychology and Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

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