Richard Jardim, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), has spent 14 years with the institution, five of them as CIO. In his role, he oversees a global team dedicated to delivering innovative, resilient technology solutions that strengthen CIBC’s position as a relationship-oriented financial institution.
CIBC, headquartered in Toronto, reported more than 26.5 billion Canadian dollars in revenue in 2024. The bank’s reach extends across North America and into Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, with a strong retail, commercial, corporate and capital markets presence. “We offer the full service in the US along those businesses, and we do a lot of north-south connectivity for our clients,” Jardim explained, referencing business conducted on both sides of the Canadian border with the United States.
The CIO’s Dual Mandate
Jardim describes his remit as both vertical and horizontal. Vertically, his team embeds CIOs into each business line, including retail banking, commercial banking and payments, capital markets, wealth management and digital banking. Horizontally, he drives enterprise-wide initiatives such as cloud migration, automation and digital banking frameworks.
“My accountabilities are very much bringing that whole capability to the businesses and our clients from a technology perspective,” he said. “Then horizontally, it’s making sure that we build services at the bank that could be reused across different businesses.”
His business background shapes how he leads technology. “I have a particular passion for making sure that tech is about giving business value and ultimately client experience,” he emphasized. “If it’s not doing that, then we have to question why we’re investing in technology.”
A Mission Anchored in Clients
For Jardim, technology at CIBC always comes back to serving clients. “Our clients are our number one passion at our bank, and they always should be,” he emphasized. “We want to make our clients’ ambitions a reality. We want to make sure they can fulfill what they need from our bank through easy and effective interactions with our technology and with our advisors.”
It is a mission that blends innovation with resilience, speed with simplicity and technology with human insight. As Jardim summed up, “Where we have to help from a leadership point of view a lot is separate the hype from the reality. People get caught up in the hype, and then they go down the wrong path. It’s really trying to pick out what’s reality versus hype and focus on that.”
Simplicity as a Rallying Cry
A central focus for Jardim and his team is driving agility, speed and simplicity across CIBC’s platforms. Of the three, he emphasizes simplicity as the foundation.
“If things are complex to begin with, and you don’t make them simple, then you’re trying to always put processes and jam technology in on already overly complex process,” he noted. To combat this, his team has mapped out CIBC’s roughly 1,200 applications, assessing which should be decommissioned, modernized or consolidated.
This rationalization reduces duplication, simplifies data flows and strengthens the bank’s ability to deliver quickly. Jardim pointed to the migration of CIBC’s proprietary online banking platform to the cloud as an example. “That ability for speed and agility was really predicated in us thinking about the footprint and then looking at what kind of infrastructure should we run on,” he said. “We moved it to cloud.” The result was the capacity to release features more frequently, onboard new clients at scale and adapt more quickly to customer needs.
Investing in People and Skills
For Jardim, technology transformation is inseparable from talent transformation. “Honestly, the biggest asset we all have is usually our people,” he underscored. “For CIBC, it’s no different. Our talent and our people make the bank.”
CIBC is investing in a five-year strategic workforce plan to anticipate future skills and develop intellectual property in-house. Jardim highlighted the launch of Kai, the bank’s internal generative AI platform based on ChatGPT, as one example. “We’ve given this out to all our knowledge workers of the bank,” he offered as an example. “Tens of thousands of people now have this tool. You have to take training to use it, and we’re showing people we’re willing to invest in that learning.”
The bank also encourages employees to pursue cloud certifications and equips developers with GitHub Copilot to accelerate coding. Leadership development is another priority, particularly around change management. “Change is happening dynamically everywhere around us, and it’s stressful. We don’t always have the answers. We’re also learning,” Jardim reflected.
When recruiting, CIBC seeks not only technical expertise but also curiosity and adaptability. “Curiosity is interesting when you put some of these tools in the hands of different people,” he noted. “The young people that we hire, they’re naturally curious. They’re much more comfortable with tech in hand.” Communication skills and a blended understanding of business and technology are also rising in importance.
Navigating Emerging Technologies
Looking ahead, Jardim sees artificial intelligence, quantum computing and augmented and virtual reality as critical technologies with both opportunity and risk.
“You can’t separate AI from data,” he said. “Like any kind of analytic, if the data isn’t good and you don’t understand your data, you’re not leveraging the right type of data.” He anticipates AI will enable highly personalized banking experiences, though regulatory oversight must keep pace.
On quantum, Jardim acknowledged both the risks and potential. “The ability to break encryption and to have increased cyber attacks… that’s the negative side,” he said. “On the flip side, we see quantum as being a huge opportunity for us to leverage that type of capability to look at things like portfolio optimization and much more powerful AI platforms.”
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written three bestselling books, including his latest Getting to Nimble. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
