From international banking, Ian moved on to corporate banking (with a spell of around three years in financial middle office roles) which was where he found his home. At this time corporate banking was full of the need to monitor and report on the activities of the banks clients so that is where he concentrated his learning. He also realised that being a branch manager was no longer a viable goal. He chose to reach the level of departmental manager as his goal.

His way of proving he knew how things fitted together was to learn all of the constituent parts of the teams around him so that those that either reported to him, or relied on him, could be sure that impacts of changes anywhere in the process stream could be managed.

This meant learning how to write macros (if you remember those) in Lotus 123 and Excel before moving on to writing VBA scripts behind Access database.

This concept of training meant that market pricing, credit scores, task automation and information sharing was the key to greater productivity and accuracy for his employers. 

The results of this way of thinking led to him being promoted to an Executive Director in a global financial institution manager the middle office where the following areas relied on his teams to provide information across European offices. This included information to; financial teams, and hence regulatory reports, front offices, back offices, credit teams, and others. It even meant that the system he championed and helped to design had elements copied into head office systems to enhance information flow to pertinent people rather than just a front office, or the finance team.