Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) has an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Hous­ton Ross as its group chief in­for­ma­tion and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer, ef­fec­tive June 1, 2023.

In a state­ment, RFHL said in his new piv­otal role, Ross is charged with spear­head­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion en­deav­ours, el­e­vat­ing op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence through the adop­tion of cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies, and catalysing in­no­va­tion across the en­tire RFHL Group.

It added that Ross brings a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence, boast­ing over two decades of suc­cess­ful lead­er­ship in dri­ving dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives with­in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

“His track record speaks vol­umes, show­cas­ing an in­nate abil­i­ty to align tech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ments with strate­gic busi­ness ob­jec­tives, ul­ti­mate­ly de­liv­er­ing tan­gi­ble and mea­sur­able out­comes.

“No­tably, Mr Ross was rec­og­nized in 2016 by CIO Mag­a­zine and Com­put­er­World Mag­a­zine as one of the top 100 CIOs in the world. This pres­ti­gious ac­co­lade un­der­scores his prowess in the realm of in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and lead­er­ship. In ad­di­tion, in 2022, he re­ceived the pres­ti­gious Out­stand­ing Lead­er­ship award at the Mon­ey 2.0 Con­fer­ence in Dubai, in recog­ni­tion of his re­mark­able con­tri­bu­tions to the fields of Fi­nance and In­sur­ance,” RFHL stat­ed.

It added that pri­or to join­ing RFHL, Ross held a dis­tin­guished ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee po­si­tion at Paidy Inc. in Tokyo, Japan—a pres­ti­gious Fin­Tech start-up count­ed among the ex­clu­sive six uni­corn com­pa­nies in Japan.

In this role, he or­ches­trat­ed a se­ries of ground­break­ing ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing a com­pre­hen­sive over­haul of the cloud-based pay­ment plat­form uti­lized by over eight mil­lion cus­tomers, the seam­less in­te­gra­tion of a post-pay­ment ser­vice in­to Ama­zon Japan, and the or­ches­tra­tion of the largest-ever ex­it of a for­eign-owned start-up in Japan’s sto­ried his­to­ry, RFHL added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it not­ed that Ross has wield­ed his ex­per­tise in board-lev­el roles with­in the bank­ing and in­sur­ance sec­tors across Asia and Eu­rope, spear­head­ing trans­for­ma­tive ef­forts on both re­gion­al and glob­al scales.

Nigel Bap­tiste, RFHL group pres­i­dent, and CEO, who com­ment­ed on Ross’ ap­point­ment said, “Hous­ton is un­doubt­ed­ly a sig­nif­i­cant as­set to our lead­er­ship team. His pro­found un­der­stand­ing of dig­i­tal strat­e­gy, cou­pled with his un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to in­no­va­tion, po­si­tions him per­fect­ly to ac­cel­er­ate our dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney and for­ti­fy our adapt­abil­i­ty and re­spon­sive­ness with­in an ever-evolv­ing busi­ness land­scape.

RFHL stat­ed that Ross rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed the en­thu­si­asm about join­ing the RFHL Group, re­mark­ing, “The Re­pub­lic Group is renowned for its rich his­to­ry and for­ward-look­ing vi­sion.

“I ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pate col­lab­o­rat­ing with this su­perbly tal­ent­ed team to dri­ve tech­no­log­i­cal ex­cel­lence and de­liv­er ex­cep­tion­al val­ue to our val­ued cus­tomers.