Midlands Business Jon Robinson

Simon Nash

A new chief information office has been hired at Birmingham-based Al Rayan Bank.

Simon Nash has 30 years’ experience in the financial services sector with multinational businesses including RBS, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.

Directly prior to his new role, Nash spent a number of years as a consultant providing strategic direction on IT security, change management and programme oversight in the fintech sector.

In his recent role at EY, he was contracted to work with board and Exco colleagues as a chief information officer and executive consultant.

He will lead information technology innovation as well the development and augmentation of information policies and processes for the benefit of bank’s more than 90,000 customers and 300-plus employees.

He will be responsible for a team of almost 50 colleagues and will oversee further technology projects scheduled for this year, including the ongoing development of the recently launched mobile banking app.

Nash said: "Al Rayan Bank has a refreshing business model in the banking sector, with a very strong people focus.

"This gives me the opportunity to use my experience in financial services to help deliver best-in-class technology to benefit our growing customer base, as well as my colleagues.

"I’m excited to join Al Rayan Bank at such an important point in the company’s upward trajectory.

"My team and I will be focusing on developing resilient solutions grounded in security, scalability and reliability and I’m looking forward to contributing to the leadership team’s ambitious objectives for 2020."

Chief executive Ahmed Sheikh said: "Simon has a proven record of information leadership and that will be invaluable to the Bank’s development.

"His experience collaborating with senior leadership teams in the financial services and fintech sectors will be instrumental in channelling future growth and ensuring the technology that our business is based on is delivering exactly what our customers need, while remaining true to our Islamic finance principles."