Catherine Allen to Depart BITS

Long-time BITS CEO Catherine Allen announced she plans to step down from her position as of May 1. However, she does not plan on leaving the financial services industry, as she will take a more-active role in The Santa Fe Group, the strategic consulting company of which she is chairman and CEO. The Santa Fe Group manages the Financial Institution Shared Assessments Program and Payments Partner Group, two programs that initially started with BITS.

Allen was the founding CEO of BITS, the non-profit consortium of 100 of the largest financial institutions in the United States, which is also the business strategy and technology division of The Financial Services Roundtable. She held her position for over a decade. In that time, she worked with bank CEOs and other senior executives on critical emerging issues related to such topics as payments, e-commerce, risk management, IT security, crisis management and fraud reduction.

"Catherine is a leader and a visionary," said BITS chairman William Osborn, chairman and CEO of Northern Trust Corporation, in a statement. "She has tremendous integrity, she has earned the trust and respect of the industry and the regulatory community, and she gets results. She created BITS and made it what it is today. I look forward to her continued success and to working with The Santa Fe Group."