Emily Mbele, RMB. Photo: Paul McGavin

Banks are among the biggest spenders on technology, and are constantly modernising and improving their systems to run their businesses better. It’s hard to think of another industry, other than the telcos, that needs such high levels of uptime, which is one reason why everyone remembers a bank outage, particularly if you’re a customer, stuck with no money when the bill is presented. Banks are also not known for being particularly forthcoming about the specifics of their technologies, this being seen as some kind of differentiator, which made this interview with Emily Mbele, RMB’s CIO of engineering, something of a challenge.

Speaking very generally, she explains that her responsibilities include ensuring that all the bank’s systems integrate properly with one another.