StanChart recruits former GCHQ director to tackle financial crime

The trend of former spies joining banks has continued with Standard Chartered's appointment of Sir Iain Lobban, former director of GCHQ, to advise its board of directors on financial crime.

The emerging markets-focused bank, which has twice been fined by US regulators for compliance failures in recent years, said Sir Iain's appointment was "part of the group's strategic priority of combating financial crime and continuing to invest in its conduct and compliance capabilities".

Big banks are scrambling to improve their defences against cyber crime, especially after high profile attacks by hackers, such as last year's theft of data on millions of customers at JPMorgan Chase.

Two years ago HSBC hired Sir Jonathan Evans, former director of MI5, the UK secret services agency, to join its board of directors and sit on its financial system vulnerabilities committee.

Sir Iain was director of GCHQ, the UK state communications monitoring agency, from 2008 until he stepped down last year. He was forced to defend the Cheltenham-based agency from international criticism over its extensive online eavesdropping activities that were revealed by leaks from former US intelligence worker Edward Snowden.

StanChart which has operations across Asia, the Middle East and Africa, established its new financial crime risk committee in December to oversee the group's policies, procedures, systems, controls and assurance for anti-money laundering among other responsibilities.

The committee has three other external advisers: Frances Townsend, former assistant to the US president for homeland security and counterterrorism; Lazaro Campos, former chief executive of the Swift international payments system; and Boon Hui Khoo, former president of Interpol.

As well as the fines from US regulators, StanChart suffered a reprimand from the Monetary Authority of Singapore last year over the theft of 647 of its private clients' monthly bank statements.

"We are very proud to welcome Sir Iain to Standard Chartered," said Sir John Peace, chairman. "He has served the UK government and the international intelligence community with great distinction for many years, and we look forward to having the benefit of his extensive experience as we advance our financial crime-fighting efforts."

Earlier this year StanChart announced a boardroom clear out, hiring veteran investment banker Bill Winters to replace Peter Sands as chief executive next month. Sir John is to step down as chairman next year and three non-executive directors are leaving along with its veteran head of Asia, Jaspal Bindra.

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