OCBC builds the the next pipeline of talent

Lim weaves in support for women bankers to broader industry talent shortage.

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In 2021, Mayda Lim took the next step in her banking and IT career: after a four-year stint working in China for a prominent Australian bank, she returned to Singapore to spearhead the development of OCBC’s engineering team across Asia Pacific.

“When I first joined the bank, my first assignment was to grow our in-house software development team,” Lim, who is OCBC’s Head of Software Development Centre in the Group Operations & Technology division, told Asian Banking & Finance in an exclusive interview. “We want to transform from buying the product to building the product ourselves.”

Just over two years later, Mayda has successfully scaled OCBC’s engineering team, quadrupling the number of experts in the team by hiring more than 600 software engineers.

Looking at her time before joining OCBC, it’s easy to see why Lim was chosen to complete this task: she had previously served as head of technology for ANZ’s China technology campus, where she directed the offshore software development centre with staff composed of 300 people. In her brief stint with ANZ Singapore before this, she drove the development of 8 prototypes and launched a start-up company focusing on blockchain in trade finance.

Tech roots