Ewan MacLeod

Built from the inside out

The AI Fluency for Senior Leaders programme wasn't designed in a lab or a consultancy. It was built from the direct experience of working as a technology leader inside banks - seeing firsthand how executives struggle with AI decisions when they've never actually used the tools themselves.

Most recently Ewan was interim CIO at a UK-regulated bank, leading technology strategy, digital transformation and the practical adoption of AI - including AI-assisted engineering and automating a mortgage process from hours to minutes. Today he builds AI agents himself, every day, including the Lumen agents participants use on the programme. This isn't advisory work from a distance.

The career behind the programme

Over 25 years in banking and financial services technology, Ewan has held senior leadership roles across retail banking, digital banking, core banking transformation, and fintech. His career spans the UK, Northern Europe and the Gulf region, including roles in Oman, Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

Key experience includes:

• Group Chief Digital Officer at Nordea, the largest bank in Northern Europe - and founder of Nordea Ventures
• Chief Transformation Officer at Sohar International Bank (Oman)
• Interim CIO at a UK-regulated Sharia-compliant bank
• Senior Programme Director at NatWest
• Digital banking and core system transformation programmes
• AI strategy and deployment in regulated environments
• Working across UK and Gulf financial markets

Why this programme exists

After years of watching executive teams approve AI budgets without having used the tools, sign off governance frameworks without testing what they're governing, and form opinions from headlines rather than experience - Ewan built a programme to fix that gap.

The AI Fluency programme gives each senior leader their own AI agent, structured weekly challenges based on their real work, and direct coaching from someone who deploys AI in banking every day. It's not a briefing. It's not a workshop. It's six weeks of genuine use that changes how leaders think about AI.

Independent perspective

Through New Era Digital Partners, Ewan works with banks and financial institutions on digital transformation and AI strategy. He publishes across four specialist media properties covering fintech, conversational AI, mobile technology, and global banking. He is President of the City CIO Club in London. This breadth of perspective means the programme draws on real-world patterns from across the industry - not a single vendor's worldview.