Katie Murray

It’s amazing to think we might be the only one, but I think you’re absolutely right. I actually think it’s the culture that came up from within. You know, there was an absolute focus from the previous CEO and CFO that they wanted to make sure that they advanced the cause of women and have far more gender diversity in their management committee.

And so I know that when I was joining the bank in 2016, that Ewen Stephenson [CFO] at that time very much wanted women to be able to take part, and he was willing to wait for me to make a slightly longer route back from living overseas to come in, and then made sure I got the opportunities.

And then he put me in as interim CFO, and said “Right. Katie, I’ll put you in as interim. I’ll give you every chance to be successful, but you need to get this job now.”  I think the thing it is about being set up is so that you’re able to show what you’re capable of, and having that time.

So it was an absolute focus from the leadership before us, to make sure that we were in the right position and then something that was then felt across the executive, and had great support from the board as well. So I think it’s never one simple thing. There are lots of things that layer on top of each other to make sure that you can get there.  And then when you arrive, to give you the chance to be successful.

I think with any big organisation, there is obviously the big group CEO and then there is a number of divisional CEOs beneath that, and beneath that, there is a number of profit centre lines. And it kind of comes up generally through that profit centre line.

Ross [McEwan] was really interesting. He was HR by background, but then he came to the bank to be the CEO of retail, so covering a huge portion of our business, and then made that transition up to CEO. Where you start, doesn’t actually particularly matter. It’s the journey that you take from there.

And what I often say to the finance professionals is leave finance for a while. You can come back; we will always be happy to have you back, but actually leave and go and do different things and be on the other side, be on the commercial side. So you can get that P&L experience, and then you can continue to work your way up through that side. And if you discover that on that [commercial] side, it’s not the right thing, or you want different opportunities, you’ll be a far better functional specialist.

When you’re the CEO, you need to look to your right and your left, forwards and backwards at the same time.  And having that, running a business experience as you work your way through is something that’s really important.