CIO of troubled Co-operative Bank leaves after one year

Co-op Bank CIO Peter Coleman to leave after being in the role since April 2013

Peter Coleman, the CIO of the troubled Co-operative Bank, is to leave after just one year in the role and a little over two years since he joined the Co-operative Group.

It caps a turbulent year for both the Co-op Group and the Co-op Bank, both of which have come close to plunging into outright administration.

Coleman was therefore involved in the £1.5bn re-capitalisation of the Co-op Bank, which was also spun out of the Co-op Group when hedge funds took a 70 per cent stake and outright control.

The Co-op Bank, meanwhile, has long been noted for its archaic IT systems, which were further complicated when it acquired Britannia Building Society in 2009.

Its plans to build a unified IT platform for both the bank and Britannia contributed to the losses, particularly after that system had to be abandoned in confusion. The fall-back of using Lloyds Bank's IT by acquiring a chunk of its network also fell through when the Co-op Bank's parlous financial position was exposed and its credit rating dramatically slashed.

Coleman contributed to the crisis management at the bank over the past year by cutting some 12.5 per cent in costs in just six months by putting together a new IT strategy. This, he claims, will simplify the banks IT infrastructure as it migrates to a new, more customer-focused platform.

The departure has yet to be announced, although his LinkedIn page indicates that he has left and is currently "looking for new opportunities".

Following the takeover of the bank by hedge funds, it announced plans to invest £500m on a "digital transformation plan" based on Coleman's strategy.

Prior to joining the Co-op, Coleman had been head of IT at the UK's biggest building society, Nationwide, for just under three years, and had also headed up IT at Halifax Bank of Scotland for eight years.