Lloyds Banking Group to recruit RBC CIO Morteza Mahjour

Mahjour to fill vacancy left by Darryl West, who jumped ship to Barclays

Lloyds Banking Group is to appoint a new CIO to fill the void left by former director of IT Darryl West, who jumped ship to rival Barclays last year.

Lloyds is expected to announce that the former CIO of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Morteza Mahjour, is to join the firm within days, Sky News reports.

The bank had made extensive use of offshore outsourcing under West, but it is now hoping that its ageing systems infrastructure can undergo an overhaul under Mahjour.

It follows a spate of embarrassing breakdowns in banks' technology in recent years, with the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) the most affected, with its June 2012 outage costing the firm at least £125m. Lloyds itself had a glitch earlier this year which saw half of its cash machines shut down for several hours.

These breakdowns have led banking regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to conduct an investigation into banks' computer systems. The FCA will carry out the investigation alongside the Prudential Regulation Authority, which is part of the Bank of England, and will examine how banks and building societies manage their exposure to IT risks.