Are the days of the “Senior Vice President” in banking on the wane?

In recent weeks, a smattering of corporate titles in banking have started to get wacky. In an industry that deployed the corporate ladder with painful consistency, banks are starting to introduce eye-rolling corporate titles  — and we’re not quite sure why.

Consider Hungtington Bank. A week and a half ago the Columbus, Ohio, super regional announced that Jeff Sturm had been named “Chief Continuous Improvement Officer.” Now that’s a title. Sturm, who joined Huntington from Fiserv, is charged with “further improving internal business processes to help Huntington maintain its superior customer service and deliver its commitment of positive operating leverage.” No doubt, the wonky title will help.

Then there is Think Finance, the online personal loan maker to subprime borrowers, which last month created a new position called Chief Integrity Officer. Martin Wong, who assumed that position, will make sure Think Finance “offers the most clear, transparent and fair products in the industry.” Wong is a lawyer by training.

And then there are the titles that reflect newfangled ways of doing things, like the “AVP, Lead Decision Science Analyst” position open at Barclaycard. Here’s what Barclaycard wants from this executive:

The Lead Decision Science Score Developer position provides project-specific leadership in building targeting solutions that integrate effectively into existing systems and processes while delivering strong and consistent performance specifically in the area of collection/recovery and fraud models … Working with Decision Science Managers, the Lead Decision Science Score Developer role provides expertise in project design, predictive model development/ validation/monitoring/tracking.

If you want to do that for Barclaycard, you’ll need a Masters or PhD in any one of a number of quantitative disciplines, like statistics or economics.

But don’t think all corporate titles in banking are getting jazzed up. Leave it to Citigroup to continue employing people in the position of “Head of Global Functions Technology Audit.” We’re not even sure we want to know the responsibilities of that position.

The point here is titles don’t make the bank; creativity, ingenuity, drive, spark, vitality — this is what banking executives need to move the industry to a new paradigm. Anyone hiring a Chief Creativity-Ingenuity-Vitality Officer?