Digital In And Out

Nitin Bhargava has overseen 1,612 business changes in his 18 months at Mashreq Bank. Since being named chief technology officer in September 2015, Bhargava has made huge inroads in accelerating business processes and sharpening the customer experience through a variety of innovative means.

Joining Mashreq in September 2015, Nitin Bhargava knew that fresh change was needed if the bank was to appeal to a new generation of customers while sharpening its internal processes. Vast changes in strategy and technology were a must. “The biggest challenge I initially faced was what I call ‘fit-for-purpose IT,” he says. “The systems had issues with reoccurring incidents, and the turnaround time of fixing them was too high. This also included transparency around informing and engaging with business users to manage change, which was lacking. We needed to create a structure on mean times to respond and fix, and communicate with the business so that they got what they asked for in a timely manner.”

Bhargava took on responsibility for technology across Mashreq’s retail, corporate, treasury and capital markets and international business divisions, centrally supporting offices in New York, London, Hong Kong and India – which also has plans for a corporate bank there – from its UAE base.

Bhargava recalls the exertion that was needed from him and his team to ensure that things ran smoothly. “We would have to work weekends and nights,” he says. “If I got a call at 3am I would have to come in and help resolve an issue.”

He adds that more precision was needed around KPIs, which would in turn reduce errors. “IT needed to move from being a back office function to one that had a seat at the decision making table,” he says. “We needed to track the use and business case of each investment that we’ve made, its ROI and value proposition.”