HSBC has hired female tech star from Barclays

A senior female technologist who helped shake up technology at Barclays investment bank in both London and India has moved across to a senior role at HSBC.

When it comes to prominent women in fintech – an all too rare phenomenon – Kritika Shekar surely stands out. She spent 16 years working in various senior tech roles at J.P. Morgan in Japan, Australia and the UK and had won awards for her contribution to technology and being an “inspiration” to other women with ambitions to make it into the sector.

Despite ongoing efforts to attract more women into financial technology, they remain very much in the minority and – with the odd exception like Kim Hammonds, CIO at Deutsche Bank, or Lori Beer, CTO of J.P. Morgan’s investment bank – very few make it into the senior ranks.

Now, after two years at Barclays – firstly as head of its Asian functions technology and latterly overseeing the transformation of its technology within its UK investment bank – Shekar has left for HSBC.

There she has taken the role of chief operating officer for its application development and maintenance division.

Shekar spent a significant period of time with J.P. Morgan before moving across to Barclays and has now shifted positions again within two years.

This is reflective of the ongoing churn in the senior ranks of banks’ technology divisions. Beer replaced Mark Ashton-Rigby at J.P. Morgan, who returned to London from New York to lead Barclays’ tech. Meanwhile, Simon Holden, a senior technologist at Morgan Stanley, moved to Hong Kong to become its CIO for Asia. Earlier this year, Credit Suisse hired Simon Tasker, the former head of capital markets technology at Deloitte, as a managing director and Stuart Bevan joined Deutsche Bank to lead its cash equities technology division.