Ian Buchanan CIO50 2008

As a member of the Alliance & Leicester's executive committee, Ian Buchanan has accountability for IT and business change.

Buchanan joined the bank more than two years ago and is currently leading a complete transformation of the bank's business operations and technology with the aim of increasing customer focus, enabling faster growth in direct channels and delivering greater cost efficiency.

His strategy involves the development of new customer-facing channel technology and the replacement of legacy core banking platforms - working in partnership with Accenture and IBM. Underpinning this is a recently completed virtualised IP infrastructure for Alliance & Leicester's branch network, ATMs and call centres.

Before joining Alliance & Leicester, Buchanan spent 17 years in technology and operations in international leadership roles in investment banking working for a number of global banks, most recently at Nomura where Buchanan was a member of the executive committee, CIO and Head of Operations, Services and Technology.

His early career was spent in consultancy and systems development within the oil and drinks industries, working for BP and Diageo. Buchanan studied physics at Durham University.