My remit grew as I learned where one team’s answer stopped.

Mandate

Connect customer operations and continuity arrangements across the bank without displacing specialist control responsibilities.

Outcomes

• Retained four failed conditions from a twelve-scenario continuity exercise and secured AUD 780,000 for correction.
• Recommended five six-month supplier extensions costing AUD 1.4 million when transition evidence was incomplete.
• Reconciled 312 settlement outcomes into 264 on-time and 48 late cases, with AUD 107,000 corrective fees and expenses.

Decisions in context

Becoming COO required me to stop treating the operating boundary as the edge of the problem. Customer tasks crossed technology, supplier and specialist decision responsibilities, and those connections mattered most when normal service was interrupted. I established a more explicit account of what our exercises had demonstrated and what remained unproved. The supplier extensions were a difficult commercial recommendation because the cost was immediate while the benefit was preparation for a transition that still needed testing. The settlement review also exposed a weakness in our own preferred milestone. I report these decisions as operating judgements, not as evidence that I control every banking risk. My expense delegation supports the work in my remit; the bank’s balance sheet and income describe its wider scale. Maintaining that distinction is part of the clarity I expect from other executives as well as myself.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; considering a later operating or first-board role only within agreed transition and conflict conditions.

Mandate

Bring branch service and central processing into a coherent operating account as distribution arrangements changed.

Outcomes

• Distinguished three insufficiently prepared branch closures from five ready to proceed.
• Reported AUD 920,000 in delay and additional access work rather than conceal the timetable cost.
• Tracked AUD 1.1 million measured annual expense reductions by 2018 for the five completed closures only.

Decisions in context

This appointment brought the local service experience and the central processing record into the same management discussion. Previously, either side could describe its work as finished while the customer still needed the other. I spent time following tasks across that boundary and asking how proposed changes would work in particular locations. The branch programme was the clearest test. I supported five closures and argued for postponing three because their replacement arrangements were not sufficiently demonstrated. That mixed recommendation was harder to communicate than a uniform decision, but it matched the evidence available. I learned to show the cost of delay without treating it as proof that proceeding would have been preferable. The role also prepared me for wider coordination: property, customer policy and specialist decisions needed their own owners, even when the operating outcome depended on all of them.

Reason for the move

Appointed COO after demonstrating cross-functional operating judgement and continuity coordination.

Mandate

Improve the handling and reconciliation of operational work around approved lending.

Outcomes

• Examined 1,040 aged records and separated 740 actionable items, 210 awaiting customer input and ninety duplicates.
• Completed the actionable subset and established explained follow-up for unresolved customer responses.
• Delivered a nine-week correction programme with AUD 320,000 expense and an auditable account of administrative removals.

Decisions in context

Moving to Tervellan increased the scale and complexity of the work around lending decisions. I led administrators who needed clear instructions and dependable referral routes, while credit authority remained with another function. The backlog correction became an important personal lesson because I had initially accepted the combined age report as a sufficient description. Investigating the records showed that the total concealed different actions and different reasons for waiting. I had to acknowledge that my own reporting had made the work less intelligible. The correction programme was measured through the categories it actually resolved, not through a claim that every entry represented a completed customer transaction. That experience changed the questions I asked of later dashboards. I became more interested in the decision a measure enabled than in the apparent precision of the total itself.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead branch and central operations after linking processing evidence with customer completion.

Mandate

Maintain controlled branch service while making central instructions workable in local conditions.

Outcomes

• Documented practical requirements before introducing revised account-administration steps.
• Established a named referral route for instructions requiring authority beyond the branch team.
• Kept local service exceptions distinct from permission to bypass a required control.

Decisions in context

Supervising a branch team made operating design tangible. We could not perform an instruction merely because a central document said it was available. Staff needed the relevant authority, records, training and facilities, and customers needed an explanation they could use. I organised the local work and raised gaps with the regional manager, rather than improvising around a control that appeared inconvenient. The team’s eighteen colleagues were my operating responsibility; the mutual’s assets were not. That boundary taught me to describe scale without borrowing another function’s authority. I also learned that an exception should be recorded well enough for somebody else to understand it later. When I moved to Tervellan, I carried the branch perspective into a central function that could otherwise have mistaken dispatch of an instruction for completion of the customer’s task.

Reason for the move

Joined a larger bank to develop experience in central lending administration.

Mandate

Maintain accurate operating records and follow unresolved customer instructions through the proper referral process.

Outcomes

• Investigated inconsistent instruction records before requesting an authorised correction.
• Followed incomplete requests between branch and central teams rather than assume dispatch meant completion.
• Built practical knowledge of reconciliations and the evidence needed for supervisory review.

Decisions in context

I entered the mutual shortly after completing my commerce degree. The role involved records, account-administration tasks and the quiet follow-up needed when a request did not fit the expected sequence. I was not making lending decisions or designing policy. My contribution was to establish what had happened, identify what remained uncertain and bring the issue to the person authorised to decide. A customer whose paperwork had moved between teams taught me that local completion could be a misleading idea. I began following the whole request, within my junior remit, rather than regard its departure from the branch as the end of our concern. The work gave me respect for careful records and for the people who understood the process beyond its written instructions. Those habits became the basis for accepting supervisory responsibility later.

Reason for the move

Promoted to branch operations supervision after developing a reliable account of local service work.