Finalist Q&A: SAP Fioneer and Nationwide, UK IT Industry Awards
"With superb teamwork, focus, commitment and ingenuity our teams turned the challenges into successful outcomes."
The UK IT Industry Awards celebrate and promote the organisations, teams, projects, technologies and individuals who are shaping the future of IT, our industry and digital society.
The UK IT Industry Awards are designed to celebrate and promote the organisations, teams, projects, technologies and individuals who have given so much, and those who continue to help shape the future of IT, our industry and digital society.
This year's winners will be announced at a live awards ceremony on Wednesday, 11th November in London.
SAP Fioneer and Nationwide Building Society are joint finalists in Learning Provider or Initiative of the Year category.
We talked to Susan E Loftus, Partner – Services, SAP Fioneer, and Danny Seton, Engineering Lead, Nationwide, to learn more about the company's biggest challenges and achievements over the past year.
Susan is a highly experienced and charismatic leader with over 46 years in international financial services across various local, regional and global roles. She is focused on enabling strategic banking customers modernise their platforms and unlock business value through SAP Fioneer's industry recognised software solutions.
Danny is an Engineering Lead at Nationwide with 25 years of experience driving IT excellence within UK financial services. He combines deep institutional knowledge with a passionate, people-first leadership style. He specialises in building high-performing, collaborative teams and delivering secure, scalable digital solutions. Danny remains committed to fostering an agile, inclusive culture that empowers engineers and elevates the member experience.
What prompted you to enter the UK IT Awards this year?
The JET programme is a strong partnership between Nationwide and SAP Fioneer, and we were keen to share with the UK IT community the extraordinary outcomes that can be achieved through a Customer First approach. The joint venture represents a significant innovation in workforce development, delivery integration and employer‑partner collaboration. Rather than relying on traditional recruitment or off‑the‑shelf training, Nationwide and SAP Fioneer designed an entirely new reskilling model tailored to live transformation needs.
The initiative challenged the conventional separation of learning and delivery. Technical training, domain learning and professional development were embedded directly into active modernisation programmes, allowing participants to apply new knowledge immediately within real enterprise environments. This approach accelerated capability development, reduced learning decay and ensured immediate business value.
What would you say is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?
The Nationwide and SAP Fioneer partnership continued to go from strength to strength in 2026. Jointly we have delivered groundbreaking innovations, provided enriched customer experiences, and modernised Nationwide's Core Banking, Payments and Customer Data platforms all while bringing our people on a transformative learning journey.
What lessons has the industry learned, and what changes does it still need to make?
We see 5 priorities shaping the banking space: 1) Customer First; 2) Operational Resilience and Security, 3) AI and Innovation; 4) Ways of Working; and 5) Profitability and Cost Management.
It will be crucial for the industry at large to continue to drive these priorities forward building on the lessons learned and progress made to date in order to innovate quickly and safely and deliver value and surety to customers every day.
What have been the biggest challenges of the current year so far, and how have you overcome them? How have your people and partners helped?
As with any strategic modernisation programme, the teams had to overcome unplanned changes and outcomes, tight delivery timelines, and significant coordination. With superb teamwork, focus, commitment and ingenuity our teams turned the challenges into successful outcomes and delivered significant business value and operational resilience at pace throughout the year.
What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming 12 months? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?
Best use of AI, essentially how AI can be successfully imbedded in teams to provide employees with opportunities to focus on value-added activities and outcomes. Nationwide and SAP Fioneer have been collaborating on acceleration and productivity tools such as test automation; AI agents for software development, documentation and configuration; and risk management.
We will continue to jointly develop, deploy, and imbed AI in our daily work and encourage our teams to not only embrace AI but also to find new and clever use cases.
The UK IT Industry Awards will take place on 11th November in London. Click here to view the shortlist and here to book your table.