Bank of Ireland hires Roughton-Smith from UK lender as group chief risk officer

Bank of Ireland has appointed British executive Stephen Roughton-Smith as group chief risk officer (CRO). He will take up the role on December 13th and join the bank’s group executive committee.

His appointment was announced to staff on Friday by the bank’s chief executive Francesca McDonagh, and follows a recruitment process.

Mr Roughton-Smith joins from UK lender Belmont Green Finance, where he was also CRO. “In this role, he re-positioned a start-up organisation into a modern fintech-orientated mortgage lender, leading its application to become a bank,” Ms McDonagh said.

In previous roles he co-headed Moody’s EMEA structured finance business; was UK CRO at ABN Amro; deputy CRO and group credit director at Lloyds Banking Group; and, more recently, head of credit risk and interim CRO at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

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Accountant

He is a chartered accountant, with a degree in physics and a masters in philosophy. His LinkedIn page says he took a career break between 2017 an 2019 to project manage the “final stages of construction of my ‘grand design’ style farm” in Mayo.

Mr Roughton-Smith will replace Declan Murray in the role. Mr Murray had been interim group CRO since April following the retirement of Vincent Mulvey from the post.

“Stephen joins us at an exciting time for Bank of Ireland as we continue to transform and enhance our digital capability and set our strategic direction for 2021 to 2024. He will provide strong oversight and leadership of the risk function, promoting a robust risk culture in support of the group’s strategic goals and overseeing our overall risk management capability into the future,” Ms McDonagh said.