By Art Gillis

Sorry folks, but after 49 years of IT work, I have adopted a binary attitude about some things. CIOs at large banks have an enormous challenge because they don’t buy “packaged systems” and they don’t generally outsource. Everything they do is a first-time event, not a good place to be unless you’re wearing a white lab coat. So if they are getting the job done well, and determining the meaning of “well” is difficult in itself, then those CIOs should be earning a salary of $2 million a year. I remember the first time a CIO broke the $1 million cap; he made big news. But Merrill Lynch makes big news all the time. For those guys (and I mean male guys because women have more sense than to take a thankless job) who aren’t doing the job well, there’s only one answer. Go to work for a small or mid-tier bank.

Small and mid-tier banks understand a basic philosophy -- We want to exercise our banking skills, not our IT skills. What this means is that these banks rely on IT companies to do IT work. They buy packaged goods or they outsource. Without giving an elaborate explanation of what that means, I offer this. Bank technology is now known by brand names. Imagine a consultant hired by the American Bankers Association or the Bank Administration Institute to asses the adequacy of bank systems for the industry. All he’d (she’d) have to do is rattle off some brand names to get a reaction. The large banks would say “Who?” The small banks would pick one of the list. I’m not known for my public relations skills, so to give this blog some real-world substance, let me just run down the list of brand names by size of corporate revenue, and please note that each of these companies has multiple products with different brand names, so if I don’t list Fidelity’s or Fiserv’s products, it’s just because the server for this blog just doesn’t have enough storage (that was supposed to be a joke):

Fidelity National Information Services
Fiserv
Metavante
Jack Henry & Associates
Open Solutions and BISYS if they ever get to church on time
Harland Financial Solutions

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