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Sean Burke
Sean F. Burke
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Age: 56
Experience: 35+ years
Since he joined Middlesex Savings Bank in 1997, Sean Burke has had a front-row seat to the rapid pace of change in the bank’s technology function. From the run-up to Y2K preparation in his early days at the bank to the IT consumerization that drives much of his work today, he’s just about seen it all. Now the bank’s newly minted chief technology officer, Burke sat down with Banker & Tradesman to chat about his top tech priorities.
Q: What are you working on now as the chief technology officer?
A: We’re in the middle of a project right now where we’re actually replacing our online digital platform, so online banking, mobile banking, tablet banking, voice banking. It’s a significant project, but we feel that this new solution we’re putting in is going to advance in this world of user experience. If a customer logs into online banking, whether they’re on a desktop, a mobile phone or a tablet, they’ll have the same consistent user experience through any device of their choice.
On top of that, we’re adding feature functionality to this new online banking platform, and that’s really about person-to-person payments, expedited payments through ACH mechanisms; we’re also adding a new cash management feature with respect to Positive Pay. We’re really excited about this and we’re looking forward to having this go live by the end of the year. That’s really the cornerstone of our digital platform as we move off our legacy platform onto this new platform. I think it’s going to be one of the cornerstones of our whole digital platform.
Q: What are your thoughts about the digital payments space?
A: Digital payments is probably the wild, wild west right now. There’s no standardization with digital payments right now. The industry’s trying to figure out what it’s going to end up being, and our competition is not just other banks. It’s now fintech companies. Someone can download an app right now called Venmo, we can go out to lunch and pay each other and the banks are out of it. So that’s our competition when you talk about payments. And everybody’s driving from the payments space, whether it’s PayPal or any of these other organizations.
We want to do a couple of things. In the digital wallet world, Middlesex Savings Bank’s debit card needs to be at the top of someone’s wallet. Earlier this year, we introduced Apple Pay to our customers. It’s just another avenue for them to pay conveniently using their mobile devices, without pulling out their debit card. We’re going to introduce Samsung pay later this year, so we can provide that to the Samsung users as well.
The other competition in payment systems we’re competing against is merchants. They call it in the industry “closed loop transactions,” meaning Starbucks, Target, places like that. What they’re doing is offering their own payment mechanism. Take the Starbucks card. They build their own payment mechanism into the card and it keeps the banks out of the loop. But at the same time, they’re adding rewards and loyalty programs to it to entice people to use it. Those are some of our challenges, too. Everybody’s vying for the payments space and we’re right there with it. So I think those new techs that we’re going to introduce are going to help our customers stay with the Middlesex Savings Bank card.
The other thing, when you talk about payments, it’s really about fraud. Whatever mechanism you use, you really have to understand the fraud component of it. And I think we have a good story there to tell at Middlesex. We introduced chip-and-PIN technology late last year and that’s really helped with securing the debit card for our customers.
Q: Along those lines, what are your thoughts on cybersecurity?
A: It’s our No. 1 priority. As you shift everything from face-to-face [and] paper to the digital world, you expose yourself. The good news is, we’ve been dealing with cybersecurity from day 1. We’re heavily regulated, we’ve gone through the process, the government has decided to up it a little bit more and we’re going to have some additional regulations, but it’s our No. 1 priority. We do not introduce technology and operational process without always thinking about security first. Security is always No. 1.
The problem is the accelerated rate of change in technology and people wanting instant access. It doesn’t always come down to the user. We put the best security technology in place, but if the user clicks on that email with that link in there and it passes all these security controls, that’s just another thing we have to worry about. I look at cybersecurity as an organizational thing. It’s not just a technology thing. User education is a big piece of our information security program. We just have to continually educate not only our own users, but certainly our business customers and our retail customers as well, as they use our digital platform.
It’s not going away. Cybersecurity will be here and it will change and it will evolve and we’ll be chasing that. But we’re in a good spot there. Security is always top of mind.
Burke’s Top Five Books On Leadership:
- “The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize your Potential,” by John C. Maxwell
- “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap … And Others Don’t,” by Jim Collins
- “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Steven R. Covey
- “Drive,” by Daniel Pink
- “Decide: Work Smarter, Reduce Your Stress & Lead by Example,” by Stephen McClatchy
