• Research »
• CIO 100
  • White Papers
  • Tech Tool Kits
  • Analysis

Peter Hambling, CIO of Lloyd's of London, tells a story about himself that reveals one aspect of his character.

"I've always had this passion for taking things apart, been curious about what makes things tick," he says. "My father knew this was the case when he came home [shortly] after he had been presented with his 20 years' service carriage clock and guess who had removed it and had taken it back to its component parts and carefully reassembled it by pressing the parts into this ornate candlestick we had in the fireplace to create this new version of the clock."

Ah, but did it work better? "Well, I think I was about six at the time...," he says, sheepishly.

Fortunately, this innate curiosity has had more successful times, leading to Hambling running the IT needs of the more than 300-year-old specialist insurance market. And in opting for the world of risk management a few years ago after more than 20 years at various parts of what is now HSBC he perhaps demonstrated the flipside of this nature: an appreciation of order and rigour and respect for the X factor of what might come next.

Hambling confesses to be "pushing 50", but is boyish looking. "It must be all these years in technology," he laughs.

"I started off as a serial entrepreneur - ‘small businesses, small ideas' in the days when micro-computing was just starting so we had 8-bit computers, computer games and Pong. The great thing for me was that there really weren't any qualifications because the courses hadn't been invented, so most of the people who were successful had an entrepreneurial flair to them.

"I've always been very curious about what makes things work: people, practices, processes, systems, technologies. And it's that curiosity that's often driven me to try and understand something and make it better, new different, quicker, sleeker, faster."

Hambling's IT career began in the lighting entertainment business ("We moved lights round with an element of robotics which made it exciting") before he embraced small software start-ups.
"From early on in my career I had this piece where I always immersed myself into whatever business it was, and then I would bring elements of technology to the solution set through my curiosity, which later in life I discovered was quite a useful thing," he says.

"So I started off immersing myself in the entertainment industry, understanding what was needed in moving lights, how the industry worked and how people worked and then engineering a set of tools to match the people and the industry rather than trying to change the industry."

His most successful startup created pricing products for investment banking by "turning PCs into super calculators" to accelerate trades. A client liked the product so much it bought out the owners to get exclusivity on it, and on Hambling.

"I got to work very, very closely with people in trading environments and sat on the desk with them," he recalls. "Our challenge was to bring great things that made them better, swifter and more effective."
However, it was while working alongside traders that Hambling had another carriage-clock moment. "One of the early learning things I had was that actually, sometimes, you can do really dumb things," he concedes with a wry smile.

"We had a tool for pricing FX trades [where foreign currencies are purchased to take advantage of market liquidity] based on a very old piece of technology. It had half a dozen boxes and a green-screen touchscreen."