Lloyds CDO Maranca Departs Finance for Schneider Electric

Roberto Maranca, former chief data officer (CDO) at Lloyds Banking Group, has left the banking industry to join Schneider Electric, an energy management and automation company that also owns agricultural and commodities data provider Telvent DTN, as vice president of data excellence.

Before joining Lloyds in 2017, Maranca held various data and technology positions over 18 years at GE Capital, including CDO of GE Capital International; IT governance and lending leader at GE Capital UK; and IT governance and business intelligence director, IT risk data programs lead, and CIO of the leverage finance business at GE Capital.

Maranca began his career in IT roles supporting the automotive industry, and a background in engineering has created a drive to be at the center of where things are built, he says. That led him away from finance to a new focus on understanding how people use data and the internet of things (IOT) to foster global, sustainable and ethical standards of living.

“What attracted me to Schneider Electric is the incredible combination of the purpose and the values of the company. Schneider’s is number one in the energy management market, and is producing something that allows people to be good at managing their energy needs,” he says. “I think their purpose is attached to a set of sustainability values that resonated with me. Our CEO wants to help the 1.8 billion people in the world that don’t have access to energy, which was a pretty powerful message for me.”

Maranca says statistics and ordinary data practices “won’t cut it” anymore and all industries should create data science teams with members that have different skills. Sociologists, psychologists, visual artists, and philosophers should be welcome, if not necessary, additions to the ranks of any such team, he says.

“You need to present the data in the right way and to present it in the right way you need to be emphatic with the audience. You will need to also be sure that what is out there is psychologically in tune with your board, and in the future, we’ll have tricky questions to answer. I think that what Lloyds, GE Capital, and Ford gave me [are] different facets to make what I offer, in terms of how we solve different problems, richer.”

Schneider is based in Rueil-Malmaison, France, but Maranca will be stationed in the London office.