MILAN, July 4 (Reuters) - UniCredit has named Ali Khan, a cloud specialist who joins from consultancy PwC, as its new head of digital and information, replacing Jingle Pang, the Italian bank said on Tuesday.

Jingle joined UniCredit in July 2021, a few months after the arrival of new Chief Executive Andrea Orcel. She had played a key role in the digital transformation of Chinese insurer Ping An.

A year later however, UniCredit hired former Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Nexi executive Giovanni Damiani as head of digital excellence to act as a deputy to Jingle.

"Khan's knowledge of UniCredit's current technology and deep expertise in cloud and data will be critical in delivering the next step of the digital and data transformation," UniCredit said in a note, adding the changes would be effective at the end of September.

Banks around the world face a major challenge in having to shift their core IT infrastructure, which is made extremely complex by several layers of legacy systems that built up over the years, on to the cloud.

(Reporting by Valentina Za Editing by Keith Weir)