Welcome to "The Shiproom", you're on the air.
in 1959, the Bank of Scotland was the first UK bank
to install a computer.
This achievement remained the greatest source
of national pride until "Braveheart"
hit theaters, 36 years later.
Today, I'm talking with the group CIO of the company,
which later absorbed that bank.
Simon Bullers from the Lloyds Banking Group.
Now you've been really focused on modernizing
the way that Lloyds works and you're really focused
on how you can improve the employee experience.
Tell me how you started that process
and then how you're pushing it forward.
- So I joined the group two and a half years ago.
When I joined the group, we were just completing
an XP to Windows 7 migration
and I guess there was a lot of pressure
to say, we don't really wanna go through
that headache ever again
and how could we begin to look at that colleague experience
and really get back to using technology
to become a bank and not really a technology,
I guess, just for the sake of technology's sakes.
- Sure, one of the things that's been interesting
as a part of this transformation,
you guys are going all-in on Microsoft 365
moving into the cloud.
Was there resistance as a critical infrastructure provider
for the United Kingdom to make that move to the cloud?
- Obviously, a highly regulated industry
and actually, to look at the concentration risk,
actually, with every bank putting platforms
into this kind of service, what does that mean?
I think maybe the pages and the number of pages
we had to submit to the regulator for approval
were quite interesting.
In truth, we've all been learning
and I think it's that learning journey
that's been one of the challenges we had to face,
from a regulatory perspective.
- As other organizations ask you about your transformation
that you're doing, how do you describe
what you're doing internally at Lloyds to your peers?
- The way we describe it is you could start at A
and slowly progress, B, C, D, that approach.
Or you could start at the end state, Z
and ask how far you should work back
and that's been a mantra we're beginning to teach our peers,
so it's like, actually, don't start at the beginning,
start at the end state you want to get to
and then ask yourself, actually,
how far we have to get back.
I always internally say, if you got to the letter M,
you've done something wrong, actually.
- So a part of the great history
of the Lloyds Banking Group is that your organization
can trace it's history all the way back
to when the Scottish parliament established
the Bank of Scotland in 1695.
What we're looking at right now,
this is the original coat of arms
that the Bank of Scotland was given by the Queen.
I'm gonna show you a couple of coat of arms.
Is it a legit coat of arms, or is it a fake?
This is the coat of arms of the island of Diego Garcia.
Real or fake, what do you think?
- That's a fake.
- You think turtles can really stand up like that?
A crest that represents a secret town in Russia
where they developed weapons-grade plutonium.
- Probably real, actually.
- The coat of arms for the Canadian province of Nnunavut.
- I think that's real.
- Is that a narwhal?
Coat of arms of Perth, Australia.
- That's a fake.
- The Anderson family crest since the 1300s.
so working with your team at Lloyds,
is one of the things that brought about the creation
of this solution that my team has built
called the Microsoft Managed Desktop.
What is about being a heavily regulated
financial institution with 90,000 employees
that made MMD the right fit for you?
- It was really the whole notion of building
an evergreen proposition, actually.
Being able to take a security stance
that actually, was in partnership with yourself,
where we were looking for best in class
and best in breed technologies
and bringing that all into one solution.
That made it hugely attractive to us.
- Now we've actually got a fairly decent pocket
of these MMD managed devices and enabled users
within the bank, I'm curious,
what's the feedback from them?
What kind of input are you getting on that experience
that we're putting in their hands?
- Well, a traditional desktop for some colleagues
the average boot time is around about 27 minutes, we had--
- Hold on, 27 minutes?
- That's correct.
But for a typical colleague, eight to 10 minutes
and even that is a really big time.
47 agents, actually, to manage that environment
in various forms.
So I think when you hit 10, 20, 30 second boot times,
you're already winning an interesting,
I guess, emotional challenge for a colleague
but we also get a soft benefit.
Actually, productivity in terms of people
saying, I'm gonna make a change to something
because I can, I can immediately do that,
it empowers the colleague to feel as though
they want to go an extra mile with the customer,
or actually do something which they know they could.
Whereas previously, they couldn't.
- You started out with 47 agents on the box.
- Yeah.
- And as we've worked together, I think we've now
taken that down to like three
and one of the guarantees that we have
with the Microsoft Managed Desktop
is your PCs will boot in 30 seconds.
And so you've gone from average of eight to 10
to 30 seconds but more importantly,
and you talk about the fact
that your battery life is significantly longer
but your users can now work anywhere they want.
I love what you said, if they can talk
to the internet, they're in.
- And we were seeing that colleague engagement
come back as a really big enabler
but also modernizing application suites,
being able to do things differently
has really begun to change the way we think.
- And do you think this becomes
a competitive differentiation for the Lloyds Banking Group
in attracting talent?
- It really does, actually because we know
that if we can improve colleague engagement,
because we have such an influence on the UK economy,
we know that that will actually just change
I guess both the bank's ability to service our customers
but also retain talent.
That talent attrition is actually really big for us
and it's something that we want
to be on top of at all times.
So using the latest technology
and using actual class devices is really important for that.
- With Microsoft, my team's kinda like
taking care of the nuts and bolts, if you will,
just deploying, securing Windows,
your people have been able to uplevel their skills
and their impact, is that a good way to say it?
- 100% yeah and even down to looking
at infrastructure as code and how we can actually codify
changes and how we can look at the way
we just reimagine the way we do things
and that's been a really big part of that journey as well.
- There's so much fear where IT professionals
will say, well if it moves to the cloud
does my job get eliminated?
And what we actually see is your actual job
gets, becomes more impactful
because you're able to work on things
that are actually more impactful to the business.
- 100%.
- So I know this MMD project has been something
your senior leadership has been tracking
really, really closely as it's rolled out.
So what is your leadership's expectation
about the project that we're working on together
and how it's gonna contribute to the goals of the company?
- We'll have achieved an amazing picture
if we actually never have to go to the CFO
and ask for a large draw down
because we have failed in our ability to achieve evergreen,
so I think we will be measured by the fact that--
- So just a consistent--
- Change is continuous, that we take two feature releases
a year, 12 quality releases and the colleagues
actually are removed from that process.
That is the measure of success.
- So I'm really glad you're here today
because I wanna talk to someone
from the banking industry because last week
I went to an auction for unclaimed safety deposit boxes
and I'm wondering if you can help me check out
the contents of some of them.
- Of course.
- And then give me a rough appraisal
to see if I got anything good or not.
- Okay.
- So here's the first one.
So let's take a look at this.
All right, what do you think?
Did I get anything of value?
- I'm not an expert in these things, but no.
- I paid $6 for this, did I do okay?
All right, let's go to the next one.
Okay.
- Wow
- It's even warm.
- I spent 11 years eating this kind of food.
- All right we gotta see here.
That's delicious!
I guess it's worth the $34 we paid.
you have a really unique perspective on life
and what gets you out of bed every morning.
Explain a little bit about it
and how that impacts your work and your life?
- So a year ago, I discovered I had terminal cancer.
I don't think it's something that anyone wants to hear
and certainly for me personally, it was a big shock.
I don't smoke, I don't drink
and to be told you have a lung cancer
is, you know, quite a bit of a shock.
But I think actually, it demonstrates between two things.
First of all, that when you have a program
or a piece of work that you can focus on,
as well as a family life, it actually gives you
an escape from something which actually sounds dramatic
but you really have no control over.
So that was I guess for me, a great thing
that I actually discovered about myself.
The second thing that I reflected on
and continue to reflect is no matter how bad
your day may be, somebody's always having
a way worse one than yourself
and actually, I think that when you're a cancer victim,
you realize that people talk about it
in an interesting way and men are really bad
at talking about it and actually,
framing that in a way that actually,
I'm just a regular person, these things happen.
If I can survive five years, that's great.
I've told my wife I wanna survive 35 years
and that's my personal mission to myself
and certainly, that gets me out every day
because I want to achieve that we set out to do.
- While we're talking, we have a chat bot
that's sitting, listening in and it comes up
with 12 questions related to our conversation
and we call it the database dozen.
So to make you feel at home as a banker,
we're gonna fill these babies up with pennies.
This takes me back to my childhood.
it's 50 per, right?
Have you considered how much money Lloyds can save
over the long haul on signage and ink
by cutting off one L from the name?
Lloyds can trace its origins back to 1695.
Would you have made a good CIO back then?
All right, so the Lloyds logo is a horse looking backward.
Is something chasing it?
Would your business be willing to sell life insurance
to someone who eats 15 hamburgers a week?
I'm asking for a friend.
- It's a problem we'll need to process.
- True or false, can Lloyds commercial auto lease branch
help me get a lease for a decommissioned Russian tank?
- That's false.
- Would Lloyds agricultural branch
ever support a penguin ranch?
- No we wouldn't.
- Would Lloyds ever give a home loan
to the house, if the house was haunted?
Does Lloyds Banking Groups insurance
cover damage from sharknados?
- No.
- No ?
Which ancient form of currency would you rather use?
Beans or sheep?
- Beans.
- Yeah, me too.
Which is harder, math or remembering the name
of someone you just met?
- Probably math.
- Hey Simon, thanks for coming in and hanging out
in the shiproom with us, thank you for the partnership.
If people wanted to learn more about Simon
or they wanna learn more about the Lloyd's Banking Group,
where would they go?
- You can go to lloydsbanking.com
you get to the Lloyds brand.
If you wanted to go to myself, you can find me on LinkedIn.
- Thank you for watching,
this is Brad Anderson, signing off.
I gotta get that right, Bullers.
- Yeah.
- Tell me how to say it again?
- Bullers.
- It's like Ferris Bueller but without that.
Say bullers.
- Bullers.