Gateway Bank appoints new customer chief following c-suite reshuffle

Gateway Bank has appointed a new chief customer officer (CCO), Ritu Sinha, as the current CCO, Lexi Airey, moves into her CEO role at the end of March.

Customer experience guru, Sinha, will be joining the mutual bank in mid-March, after previous customer-led roles at Telstra and Westpac. She is excited to join the team to deliver continuous improvements for the mutual’s members.

“Being a customer-obsessed leader, I look forward to supporting our members with the best-in-class service and solutions – all with an amazing feeling of really working for one stakeholder: our Members, and with a talented and diverse ‘can-do’ team,” Sinha said. 

Airey, meanwhile, is looking forward to handing over the reins as she prepares to step into her role as chief executive officer. 

“Having been at the centre of Gateway’s customer journey for over four years, I am excited to learn from Ritu’s diverse industry experience and apply those learnings to continually improving what we do," she said. "In today’s world customers have expectation transfer – they expect best practice in one area of their life to be replicated in others. 

"For example, tracking was something we used to expect from the post office, now we can track the progress of anything…our parcels, where our plane is, even to where a dog walker takes our dog."

The latest hire follows a series of executive movements announced by the customer-owned bank last year, including the appointment of CFO, Debra Landgrebe, the institution’s first chief technology officer, Peter Buzek, and the impending handover of the CEO position.

Sinha spent the last five years with Telstra, the last two as general manager of service transformation and digitisation for Telstra enterprise. She's also worked on customer experience design and management at Suncorp, Commonwealth Bank and Westpac.

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