Meet the CIO | TymeBank’s Bruce Paveley on building a digital bank

Bruce Paveley says that when he moved from a senior IT role at Standard Bank in 2017 to the then-nascent start-up digital bank TymeBank, it was “a really big shock”.
“You go from five buildings in the middle of Joburg, multiple floors, to an office in Rosebank that’s two floors, and that’s the bank, and you think, ‘Wow, is this really a bank? Can it work like this?”
That was before TymeBank had launched its first commercial services, and long before it would go on to become South Africa’s most successful digital banking start-up with nearly 10 million customers and R6-billion in deposits and R3-billion in loans.
Paveley’s love for computers started when his dad bought him a Sinclair ZX81 in the early 1980s when he was a youngster growing up in the small north coast town of Empangeni.
Today, as chief technology officer at Tymebank, Paveley is leading a team that’s building the technology underpinnings (cloud-based, of course) of a modern digital bank. And it’s a fascinating story about using technology to challenge established industry incumbents.
In this first episode of TechCentral’s new podcast series, Meet the CIO (presented by Wipro), Paveley chats to Duncan McLeod about what was involved in launching TymeBank from a technology perspective, the strategic choices it made and why, and what comes next in the bank’s journey.
Paveley tells Meet the CIO about:
• His upbringing in Empangeni and how he ended up pursuing a career in IT
• The mainframe era, and his experience as a Cobol programmer
• His IT career at Standard Bank, including his involvement in the bank’s big SAP project
• Why he joined TymeBank
• What was involved in building the new bank, and the role that technology played
• TymeBank’s technology stack, and why the bank migrated from an on-premises solution to the cloud – and why it made the technology choices it did
• Tyme Group’s internationalisation plans, and how technology is underpinning that expansion
• How he works with the rest of the bank’s management team, and where technology fits into strategic decision-making
• TymeBank’s approach to cybersecurity
• What keeps him awake at night
• And much, much more
Meet the CIO is a new podcast series produced and published by TechCentral and published monthly. We talk to IT leaders across South Africa about the role of technology in their organisations. Don’t miss an episode by subscribing to TechCentral at youtube.com/techcentral. TechCentral