Chief Data Officer — Transaction-Banking Franchise

The mandate

A listed transaction bank has invested heavily in platforms, catalogues and analytics, yet teams still create separate datasets for client, payment, liquidity and risk decisions. Reuse is limited, ownership is ambiguous and supervisory remediation requires lineage that current projects cannot consistently reproduce. The board needs data treated as a dependable business service rather than a portfolio of technical assets.

The Chief Data Officer will influence approximately €53,700 million in loans and deposits and lead around 1,175 employees and material partners. Scope covers data strategy, governance, architecture, product management, quality, lineage, analytics, privacy, platform economics and remediation. The CDO is accountable to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive committee sponsor.

The first move is to define priority data products around decisions. Client identity, cash position, transaction status, exposure and profitability each need users, service levels, quality thresholds and accountable owners. A warehouse table or dashboard is not a product until downstream teams can rely on it and know how defects are resolved.

Supervisory obligations will be embedded into delivery. Critical elements, sources, transformations, adjustments and reports need traceable lineage with approved meaning. Manual reconciliation may remain temporarily, but requires an owner, control and retirement date. Evidence should be generated through normal operation, not assembled in a parallel remediation process.

Ownership must carry authority and consequence. Business owners decide meaning and acceptable quality; technology owns reliable implementation; the data function sets standards and independent visibility. Councils should settle contested definitions and investment choices rather than review reports without decisions.

Adoption will be measured through use and retirement. The CDO will track which decisions consume a product, whether parallel files persist, how quality affects outcomes and which legacy feeds can end. Benefits count when preparation, reconciliation, incidents or infrastructure genuinely reduce.

Investment will be recut around reusable capability. Each case needs customer or control value, demand, dependencies, delivery capacity, cash, adoption and stop criteria. The CDO will halt bespoke pipelines that recreate common data and equally challenge platform work without a committed user.

Data quality will be prioritised by consequence. Defects should connect to payments, client service, credit, reporting or operational risk rather than an undifferentiated score. Root causes may sit in process, incentives or source systems; stewardship cannot become a manual cleaning team.

Analytics and artificial intelligence require governed inputs, purpose and monitoring. Models should have accountable users, explainability appropriate to consequence, drift indicators and human escalation. The bank will avoid scaling experimentation on unstable data or claiming value before adoption changes a decision.

Partners and cloud services need clear data rights, security, portability, service and exit. The organisation should understand external methodologies and retain the ability to operate critical products. Succession will develop product leaders who combine banking judgement, engineering fluency and commercial accountability.

Why this seat is open

This planned new role belongs to the next operating model, rather than replacing an incumbent. The four-to-six-month process is timed before the next capital and talent cycle while current leaders retain formal accountability until activation.

What you will own

• Build trusted data products around transaction-banking decisions.
• Influence data supporting €53,700 million of loans and deposits.
• Deliver supervisory lineage, quality and ownership through normal operations.
• Measure adoption through use, parallel-work retirement and outcomes.
• Redirect investment towards reusable capability and committed demand.
• Lead approximately 1,175 employees and partners with strong succession.
• Govern analytics, privacy, external data and platform economics.
• Give the board transparent value, quality and remediation evidence.

The first 12 months

The opening 90 days should reconcile investment, critical data and remediation obligations. Meet the 30 stakeholders most consequential to adoption, including clients, product, operations, risk, supervisors, technology and report owners. Stabilise severe data risks, assess leaders and agree product gates.

Months four to nine should launch priority products, retire duplicate pipelines and embed lineage. Stop investment without committed users and repair consequential source defects. Early value may appear through faster decisions, reduced reconciliation, avoided spend or a supervisory issue closed sustainably.

By year end, trusted products, clear ownership and measurable adoption should form a repeatable pattern. Delivery must stay within 10% of approval and forecasts should reconcile users, cash, service and people for three quarters. Independent reviewers must accept priority-risk closure, while every severe escalation must be resolved inside 30 days.

What the board will measure

• Priority decisions supported by owned data products and service levels.
• Lineage and quality evidence accepted through supervisory review.
• Parallel datasets, reconciliations and legacy feeds retired.
• Product adoption connected to customer, cash or controlled-risk value.
• Retain above 90% of pivotal data talent and ready successors for 70% of direct roles.
• Data investment stopped or redirected when demand fails evidence gates.

The person

You are a Chief Data Officer, Data and Analytics Head or Digital Executive with 18–22 years in banking or adjacent regulated services. You have converted governed data assets into adopted products with named owners, service levels and economic value.

Your accountable P&L, book, budget or portfolio has been at least €31,150 million, and you have led 825 or more people. You can demonstrate benefits and control outcomes sustained over two reporting periods.

You understand transaction banking, regulatory data and product delivery. You can challenge business definitions, technology abstraction and remediation theatre while creating ownership across organisational boundaries.

Compensation and terms

Base compensation is €340,000–460,000 plus annual incentive and LTI. The permanent Frankfurt appointment is onsite, supports international relocation and allows notice up to six months.

Confidentiality

The bank, remediation and data estate remain protected until reciprocal relevance is confirmed. Identifying facts follow mutual confidentiality; all published context is composite.