HSBC names Google veteran as digital head

HSBC has named former Google engineering director Mike Warriner as the new chief information officer for its retail banking and wealth management digital division.

Warriner will focus on setting the retail bank’s digital platform strategy and “ensuring customers are able to bank how they want, when they want,” HSBC said Tuesday. He officially started on Nov. 6.

The move is part of the bank’s overall $2.1 billion investment in digital channels. In March, HSBC signed up with Google’s cloud services to help the bank move its big data securely into the cloud and to improve its ability to analyze data for money laundering activity.

Warriner previously led the Google Engineering site and AdSense Engineering, and was European chairman of Google Payments. Previously he was chief technology officer for a British software provider, leading the development of secure online banking applications.

Warriner will be based in London. He will report to Ganesh Balasubramanian, HSBC's global retail banking and wealth management chief information officer and global head of application development and maintenance.