Interview: Gill Haus, CIO, Chase

Gill Haus, chief information officer (CIO) at Chase, the consumer banking arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co , says he feels the tremendous sense of responsibility that comes with his role. “There are millions of customers that use us every single day,” he says. “I feel the burden to make sure they all get the experience they want, that their data is protected and we’re available for them.” Haus works with more than 12,000 technologists globally across all of Chase’s lines of business, including consumer banking, home lending and wealth management, to build and develop the finance firm’s technology infrastructure. As well as being a significant responsibility, he says leading these professionals is an inspiring role. “As CIO, your job is fun when you’re working on really exhilarating problems and challenges,” he says, referring to the digital initiatives his team oversees. “My role is making sure that our systems are fully available and secure. It’s also about bringing new products and features to bear and solving problems with a plethora of different technologies.” Embracing the opportunity Haus became Chase CIO in September 2021, having previously been head of digital technology for consumer and community banking at the organisation. He joined Chase in 2020 following a series of senior technology leadership roles during a five-year stint at Capital One. Haus also spent time at AOL and PayPal earlier in his career. “I used to think that it’s a lot of fun to work on shiny new tech,” he says, discussing his switch from smaller entrepreneurial businesses to traditional blue-chip enterprises. “The thing that’s exciting in my role is I have to oversee cutting-edge tech, like agentic AI [artificial intelligence], but we also have heritage platforms, and all those systems have to come together. It really brings a bunch of not just creative juices, but real engineering practices to bear.” As Chase CIO, Haus reports to CEO Troy Rohrbaugh. Having developed a passion for technology during childhood, Haus knew he wanted to work in IT. While he didn’t necessarily aim to become a CIO, Haus assumed ever-increasing levels of responsibility during his career. When he was presented with the chance to move into an IT leadership position at one of the world’s largest financial services firms, he grabbed the opportunity. “When you get a call from a place like JPMorgan Chase, a few things are true: the brand is incredible, the people here will push you and inspire you to be much better, and if you can actually deliver on the technology, the impact that you can have is amazing. So, that’s why I was inspired to come over,” he says. “The other thing is that this firm is a place where, because of its size, you can really build a career. I didn’t know I was going to be the CIO. I don’t know what my next role is, either. But what I do know is there are amazing problems here to be solved and there’s an opportunity to do that work.” Haus says that being excited about the work you oversee is crucial to your success as a CIO, and not just because of the good times. “The reason why my excitement matters is that there are going to be bad days,” he says. “There are going to be production incidents. There are going to be bad meetings. There’ll be days when things aren’t working how we would expect. But when you are excited about the mission, you can brush those things off and you can get back on the wagon.” Making emotional connections Haus says the general direction for digital and business transformation at Chase, first and foremost, is focused on customer requirements. Chase serves more than 87 million consumers and 7.5 million small businesses. The bank has 5,100 branches in 48 US states and the District of Columbia, manages 14,500 ATMs, and offers customer services across mobile, online and phone. Haus defines the scale of the customer experience challenge: “We want to be available for everyone who banks with us in every channel that we can and make sure every single day that those services are working, and that we keep pace with the industry when it comes to innovation. “The direction of traffic is ensuring that we anticipate the needs of our customers, that we personalise the experiences in each channel and that we are aware of the different interactions they’re having, so that we can make Chase feel much more like a bank for all.” Haus describes money as an “emotional” concern for many people. While digital banking is a key element in his organisation’s approach, customers still want to call to speak with someone when they have a question or visit a branch for advice. Technology is the conduit that provides the emotional connection, regardless of channel. “For us, it’s about making sure our employees have the right tools, that those tools advance and that our customers also have the same tools, particularly as we move into a more AI-driven world,” says Haus, who says he’s proud of the achievements his tech team has made for customers and behind the scenes during his five years as CIO. “We have modernised many of our practices,” he says. “We have gone very heavily into the cloud. We have continued to evolve our digital experiences. Being customer-focused, whether it’s in a branch or online, is something that doesn’t happen without hard work and determination.” Exploiting digital innovation Haus says his team’s sterling efforts over the past few years have earned them a reputation across JPMorgan for creating systems that are available, scalable and secure. Their current priority, like every other IT team in major enterprises, is to make the most of AI . “We’re focused on how best to leverage agentic technology,” he says. “We have been using AI and machine learning for quite some time, as you can imagine. But we’re continuing to scale the tech out responsibly. We use it for personalisation already. We use it for underwriting and fraud control, and it’s about taking that approach further.” “We want to be available for everyone who banks with us in every channel that we can” Gill Haus, Chase Haus says one of the key elements supporting these explorations is LLM Suite, JPMorgan’s internal agentic platform that staff can use to ask questions, review documents and create specifications. LLM Suite was released in summer 2024 to employees across the firm, providing access to large language models (LLMs) in a secure environment . “It allows all of our employees to have experience with this technology and to figure out how to change their operating models,” he says. “We are looking to use it everywhere we can and thinking about the processes end to end. Our approach is also about improving the speed at which we deliver our products and our services.” Haus says software development is a crucial supporting element to the bank’s digital transformation efforts. Strong architectural and engineering practices, such as continuous integration and continuous deployment, are the foundations upon which his team builds products. “Those things are the differentiator,” he adds. “If I want to build a new feature on a mobile app, I can do that faster than a competitor if I can build it, test it and deploy it quickly with confidence. If I want to deploy agentic technology at scale, and I have confidence in my pipelines, I can do that.” Haus says the emphasis now is on honing the practices that allow software engineers to accelerate innovations in the technology stack: “All of our focus is on that area to unlock the things we talk about, such as, ‘Can we bring more agentic technology to bear? Can we fix vulnerabilities more quickly? And can we adopt new technologies as they make themselves available quickly and securely for our customers?’” Leading long-term change Of course, trying to second-guess the likely direction of digital transformation is far from straightforward. For example, Haus says the bank is exploring nascent quantum computing technology. The rapid pace of change means CIOs must keep one eye on the present and another on likely future innovations. “I can’t be sure what technology is going to look like tomorrow, never mind two years from now,” he says. “But I’ll tell you the thing I know for sure – we’ll be where our customers are. It may mean that some of our digital experiences may change, our banking experiences may transform as innovation is embraced, but we will be where our customers are.” Haus says delivering high-quality experiences will mean maintaining a careful balance between trust, security and privacy, while developing high levels of personalisation for Chase customers. He says this balance is likely to be a critical consideration for every CIO in an age of AI and other emerging technologies. Looking back on his digital leadership career, Haus says that effective technological change has always been driven by ensuring that business leaders beyond the IT department can serve the company’s customers better every single day. In the past 10 to 15 years, he suggests the role of the CIO has changed from providing physical technology to enabling transformation through software and data. “Now, the CIO position is about moving the organisation, including the CEO’s teams, through this transition,” he says, reflecting on the continual evolution of the digital leadership role. “Defining the future role of the CIO is a hard task. But I know that if we as technologists do all these things right, our customers will benefit, our companies will benefit and – whatever the organisation looks like in the future – we’ll have a crucial role to play.” Read more interviews with financial services IT leaders Interview: Jem Walters, CTO, Vanquis – Having come into the company through the acquisition of his money-saving app, the IT chief is bringing an agile and startup culture to the 146-year-old financial services firm. Interview: Luke Gebb, head of global innovation, American Express – Amex is pioneering agentic commerce for its cardholders – just one of a series of digital innovations driving transformation at the company. Interview: How ING reaps benefits of centralising AI – ING bank is using generative AI-powered chatbots with a human in the loop to streamline mortgage applications. It is also testing speech-to-speech models.