HSBC has hired former Google engineering director Mike Warriner as its chief information officer of its retail banking and wealth management digital operations.

Warriner has worked for the past five years at Google, where he was responsible for the company’s engineering site, and also served as the European chair of Google Payments. Prior to his work at Google, Warriner worked for 19 years at UK banking technology house Intelligent Environments, reaching the position of chief technology officer.

Warriner will now report to Ganesh Balasubramanian, and will be focused on transforming the bank’s legacy systems into a new state-of-the-art digital business platform.

Commenting on his appointment, Warriner said: “My focus has always been on the use of technology to delight users, whether a multi-player adventure game I wrote at school or more recently the complete re-write of Google’s main publisher advertising system.

“HSBC is an amazing brand, has great products and a highly capable global technology team. But even the strongest can’t sit still and the market is moving rapidly with new entrants taking advantage of mobile, artificial intelligence, chat bots and agile development.”

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