Suzanne Lakes, Vice President, IT Service Management and Reliability with U.S. Bank / Elavon, recently won the Risk and Compliance Award at the IOB Future of Finance Awards 2026.
In her current role, Suzanne leads performance reporting for U.S. Bank’s European entities. Using limited resources, Suzanne led the development of a business-wide IT Risk Management Dashboard to report on risk incidents, provide oversight for business lines and identify emerging issues quickly. With more than 1,000 colleagues using the platform across the organisation, the initiative has created new opportunities for adoption and collaboration with teams based in the U.S.
We speak with Suzanne about her passion for data and technology, problem-solving and how meaningful reporting can drive positive change. She also shares her advice for those leading digital innovation with limited resources.
I started my career in technology in the civil service during the recession of the 1980s. To progress my career, I left my “permanent, pensionable” role and moved into financial services, where I have worked in both insurance and banking for 40 years.
For the first 20 years, I worked as a specialist in technology infrastructure. Following the banking crisis in 2008, I moved into IT Service Management and then into IT Risk Management, helping to build risk processes and strengthen risk frameworks in one of the three pillar banks. It was a very different world from being a hands-on technology expert and manager, but that experience helped me spot issues and gaps and gave me a holistic view of both finance and technology.
Moving to a global banking organisation during COVID broadened my knowledge and challenged me to keep abreast of emerging technologies that can support the future of finance.
The Service Management and Reliability EU team works within Technology Risk, delivering reports to risk departments, senior executives, and business line teams to spotlight technology performance and associated risks. We pull together data from multiple systems of record to show the reliability and stability of the technology that underpins critical services for our customers and critical functions within the bank in Europe.
My role is to guide the team to produce meaningful reporting that highlights trends and risks in the technology used by the European entities of U.S. Bank. Through these reports, we can identify issues and partner with the risk team to drive remedial actions.
I love the challenge of making sense of multiple data sources and producing meaningful reports that are appropriate for each audience. I mentor my team to ensure they understand what constitutes effective reporting, have a strong grasp of technology risk, and can adapt reports to different stakeholders. Getting the most out of the team is what I enjoy most—encouraging them to be more creative, to think for themselves, to explore automation and AI, and to learn more about what we are trying to achieve together.
At school, I was most interested in maths and science, particularly problem-solving. For Christmas one year I got a Commodore VIC-20, one of the first home computers. My brothers and I competed to write code on it, and all of us ended up in technology-related jobs. I started working in mainframe technology in the civil service and studied computer science by night in Trinity College. I can honestly say I loved learning and working in technology then, and I still do.
European entities in global organisations operate within a unique regulatory landscape, as banking regulations in Europe can be more specific than those in the U.S. This often makes it a complex task to extract targeted data needed to provide oversight for our business lines and the technology supporting them.
I started collaborating with teams in the U.S., gaining access to data on resilience, stability, and obsolescence. I manually prepared reports for audiences in Europe using this information. This approach worked, but it was very labour-intensive. We therefore used an available tool—Power BI—to automate connections to the data sources. With an initial set of reports focusing initially on incidents, we were able to quickly adapt for our three European entities, with a focus on critical services and functions.
We’re excited to be broadening our reporting to cover even more technology risks, and it’s fantastic to see our work gaining such positive attention from our U.S. colleagues. They’ve been truly impressed by our strong business and customer focus, which is now inspiring collaboration and recognition across the organisation.
Over the last year, our audience has expanded to more than 1,000 users across multiple business lines, risk teams, and senior executive teams. The dashboard supports meaningful reporting by mapping technology to critical services and critical functions, providing a granular, business-focused view. It helps business lines assess potential DORA triggers and highlights potential issues through trend analysis. It also streamlines performance measurement and helps identify emerging issues quickly.
When innovating with limited resources, my key advice is to start small and focus on solving a clearly defined problem. In our case, I was able to do that initially with Excel and PowerPoint. To scale with limited technical and financial resources, I explored low-code platforms. Low-code platforms are powerful because they lower the barrier to entry—they enable rapid experimentation, quick iteration, and early value delivery without heavy investment or specialist skills.
We initially built a small, scalable solution—one report—and engaged stakeholders early. The rest of the journey was incremental: continually validating the content and the impact. Small, well-designed solutions can grow organically over time, and constraints often drive creativity by forcing simplicity, prioritisation, and better design decisions.
I was unbelievably excited by the recognition from those who nominated me, and by the number of people who continue to congratulate me. I knew the dashboard we produced was useful, but until now I did not realise how many people value it.
I am also very conscious of the work done by my team, and I am immensely proud of what they delivered. We continually challenge and check on each other to ensure our dashboard is accurate and usable. They deserve a big share of the recognition.
I am always excited by how technology enables new products and new ways of providing services. I have lived through mainframes, Y2K, and the advent of digital wallets and digital cards. I remember doing a new-product risk assessment for Apple Pay, and now I rely on it. Learning about emerging technologies and watching them mature is exciting. I look forward to seeing where AI goes in the next few years as the technology continues to improve. I am always excited by change.
Suzanne Lakes won the Risk and Compliance Award at the IOB Future of Finance Awards 2026. Learn more about the IOB Future of Finance Awards 2026 winners here.