On the lighter side of things , we ask the industry experts what makes them tick . . . .

Here ’ s what time in tech has taught Chris so far – from writing his first application aged 12 .

During the COVID-19 period , I was working for Techcombank here in Vietnam . As its Chief Technology Officer , I was charged with overseeing a program of work to elevate customer experience in the retail and business banking divisions . Over the course of just nine months , we implemented a Backbase Engagement Banking Platform that was the catalyst for extraordinary growth .

What first made you think of a career in technology ?

I ’ m the youngest of five brothers , all of whom helped my father run his family businesses . Programming became quite topical around 1990 and one of my brothers bought a bunch of computers to try to learn something about it . I was only six or seven at the time and I became quite interested . My brother was teaching himself , so he started teaching me too and , before too long , I was helping out with tech at our businesses . I remember everyone being shocked when I wrote my first application around 12 years of age . That ’ s how I got sucked into this !

What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position ?

I ’ m a big believer in the concept of holacracy – a model which decentralizes and distributes authority and decision-making capability throughout the organisation . When you ’ re managing knowledge professionals , they really need to understand why they ’ re doing whatever it is they ’ re doing and you need to be able to trust them to make decisions . At Backbase , where I recently started as Head of AI , my team in our newly founded Center of Excellence for AI in Vietnam is small and all the people I ’ ve hired are high tech ‘ navy seals ’; top talents who can do everything . As we scale up , they ’ ll become ‘ circle leaders ’ who can guide and mentor the next round of recruits .

What do you think is the current hot technology talking point ?

Right now , AI is of great interest , particularly Gen AI and LLMs .

At Backbase , we ’ re utilising LLMs to summarise and simplify financial statements from across a multi-year

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