Raphael Campbell · Chief Technology Officer · Canada
Presented to the Board or a committee
Board risk committee; full board for major technology approvals
April 2021–present
Presents quarterly technology, cyber and workaround-register reports as CTO and attends the board for programme approvals; not a director.
Reported to a committee
Board technology and operations committee
February 2016–March 2021
Reported platform performance, member trade-offs and vendor decisions to the committee as vice-president of banking platforms.
Served as a director
Board of directors; finance committee member
2019–present
Elected volunteer director of a 112-unit Winnipeg housing co-operative; reviews budgets, reserve-fund studies and monthly charges.
| Capacity | Committees |
|---|---|
| Ready to join | Risk committee · Technology or operational-resilience committee |
I am looking for a risk committee or technology committee seat on the board of an insurer, a pension or benefits administrator, a payments infrastructure operator or a public financial agency in Canada. The best fit would be an organisation about to replace a central system, move more services to the cloud or rely more heavily on outsourced providers, where the board wants a director who has lived through those decisions from the executive side. I would prefer to serve under an experienced committee chair for at least two years before taking any chair responsibility myself. I am not looking for an advisory title or a route to consulting work, and I would expect the board to assess my fit as rigorously as I would assess its needs.
Boards usually see technology through programme status, uptime figures and cyber reports. Those matter, but they rarely show the manual effort that keeps systems appearing healthy. I would help a board ask what staff do around a system before it accepts a report about the system. In practice that means asking for the count of recurring workarounds behind a major process, who owns them, and which ones a proposed investment would retire. It means reading an outsourcing or cloud proposal for the exit plan, the concentration it creates and the evidence management would rely on, rather than the provider's reputation. It also means asking who a fraud or identity control wrongly stops and what that person can do next. I would bring thirty years of ledger, payment and platform work, and a habit of reading operational evidence closely. I would not bring answers to another company's technology choices; those belong to its management. My contribution would be sharper questions earlier, and patience to wait for evidence before agreeing that a problem is solved.
The 2021 core offer arrived with a discount that expired in four months. The board's question was not whether the ledger needed replacing; everyone agreed it did. The question was whether the company understood what the replacement would and would not fix. As a director facing a similar offer, I would ask how much of the current difficulty begins outside the system being replaced, and what it would cost to wait for that evidence. I would want the cost of delay stated as plainly as the discount, including any hosting extension. I would also accept that sometimes the deadline is worth meeting. The judgement lies in knowing which uncertainty the board is buying its way past, not in rejecting every time-limited offer as pressure.
Universal income verification reduced document-fraud losses substantially, but it also slowed approvals and caused some applicants to withdraw. A board reviewing a control like that should see both figures together. I would ask management how many legitimate customers the control diverts, how long their alternative route takes and whether particular groups, such as newcomers or self-employed applicants, bear most of the delay. I would also ask what the control costs in lost business and whether that cost was anticipated. A control that reduces losses while quietly excluding honest customers carries conduct and reputational risk that the loss figures alone do not show. The director's task is to keep both visible, not to redesign the verification process.
My first months would go to understanding how the company actually operates rather than how its systems are drawn. I would ask the chair for time with operations managers as well as the technology leadership, and for a walk through one or two critical processes from customer request to completed record. I would read the last two years of risk committee papers to see which technology questions recur without resolution. Before offering a view on any programme, I would want to know how management measures the manual effort around it, and if it does not, I would ask whether that would help the committee rather than insisting on my own register format. I would also attend at least one supervisory meeting alongside management, if the chair thought it appropriate, to hear how the supervisor reads the company's technology risk. By the end of the first year, I would ask the committee chair to tell me directly whether my questions improved decisions or simply lengthened meetings, and adjust accordingly.
My conflicts are concrete. Pembrevale competes with banks, credit unions and other trust companies for mortgages through brokers and for GIC deposits through deposit brokers, so I would decline any deposit-taking or mortgage-lending board in our provinces while I remain its CTO. Our core-banking vendor, cloud providers, payment sponsor and fraud-verification suppliers serve other institutions; if a board I joined used any of them, I would disclose it and leave discussions of that supplier. Mortgage brokers and deposit dealers we work with may also serve a prospective company. I would bring nothing confidential from Pembrevale into another boardroom. Before accepting, I would seek written consent from my chief executive and board chair, and I would ask the prospective chair whether my exclusions would leave me unable to contribute where the board most needs it. If they would, the honest answer is to decline. I would also review my position every year, because a new Pembrevale supplier or market could create a conflict that did not exist when I joined.
My executive salary comes from Pembrevale, and its vendors, brokers and competitors define where I cannot be independent. I would expect a prospective board to test my relationships against its own definition and to hear about any later change from me before anyone else.
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian requirement and does not apply to the Canadian boards I am considering. I have not registered with it, and I would rely on the governing law and the prospective board's own requirements for any appointment I accept.