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Laura Merling, Chief Transformation and Operations Officer at Arvest Bank
“Our philosophy has remained the same during our growth from a small bank to a network of community-focused regional banks able to provide a complete range of financial services.” As the chief transformation and operations officer for Arvest Bank, can you elaborate on the financial services you provide and how fintech has helped improve it?
With more than 26 billion dollars in assets, Arvest Bank is a leading community-based financial institution serving more than 110 communities in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Despite being recognized by J.D. Power for our outstanding mobile banking experience, leaders at Arvest recognized that if we did not evolve, the future of our bank would be predetermined - like many community banks around the country, we would fall behind fintech startups and other non-traditional competitors, preventing Arvest from significant future growth.
To ensure the longevity of the bank, Arvest embarked on a multi-year transformation strategy, which includes adopting a next-generation core banking platform and enhancing capabilities with artificial intelligence and distributed banking services.
Phase one of the transformation was a vulnerability study that revealed “rocks in the shoes” or rather pain points for customers and non-customers alike. From the results, we identified a series of main relationship drivers for the bank, focused on process and technology. We then put together a series of 90-day initiatives that aimed to address specific customer pain points.
Creating this roadmap has allowed us to work towards set goals and allows the bank to map our transformation initiatives directly to our business goals. One example included resolution around access management for customers, stemming from challenges around account management. As a solution, our team worked to adjust our online platform to help streamline the user experience. These upgrades resulted in a significant decrease in the number of calls to the help center by, on average, 1,000 calls per day.
What are Some of the Latest Financial Technology Adoption Trends you are Witnessing in the Banking Domain?
I see the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation in the banking industry as a trend that will only continue to evolve. Over the past several years, one of the biggest challenges has been the acknowledgment of the pace of change that is needed to keep up with the ever-changing needs of both consumers and business customers. Leaders need to be prepared to adapt to change more quickly than ever before from both a cultural perspective as well as from a technology stack standpoint.
Technology will continue to advance. It is particularly important for banks to consider what it means to fully embrace technology such as AI, cloud computing, and blockchain if they want to continue leading in this space. Five years from now, technologies like metaverse, video conferencing, and biometrics will make huge leaps, and financial institutions need to be prepared to meet customers’ expectations in using that technology to engage. The pace of change is only continuing to accelerate, and banks need a technology stack that can support this dynamic environment. Now is the time to start both thinking about it and acting on it.
In a World Where Organizations Expect a Greater Level ofSimplicity, Speed, and Ease of Use in Their Banking Experience, How do you Leverage Financial Technology to Meet these Requirements?
For banks specifically, it is always best to look at what your customers need - what problems you are solving for them - and then reverse engineer a technological solution that addresses that problem. This can be challenging because what the customer needs and what the customer wants can sometimes be different things.
As technology continues to change, it is important to create an upskilling and reskilling program that aligns with your technology roadmap. Give everyone a chance to develop their own career path while ensuring they have the skillsthey need to meet changing demands
As an example, Arvest gathered data internally, looking at our bank as well as our competitors, and found that across the board, customers wanted longer branch hours, more ATMs, and more days of availability for in-person interactions. However, when we looked at the data from a different angle, we found that an overwhelming majority of this same group of customers prefer a digital channel.
This signals to us that customers are not having consistent experiences across channels and are having to go into a branch to do something that they should be able to do online. This reveals a completely different pain point that the customer would like resolved. Instead of working on lengthening branch hours or adding more ATMs, what would be most impactful is working to provide consistency across channels and allow customers to engage when and where they want to engage.
Understanding your customer and taking time to look at the problem from different vantage points, as opposed to relying on a single data set, can reveal how organizations need to adapt in order to streamline their services.
What are Some of the Technology Programs you have Spearheaded During your Term as the Transformation and Operations Officer for Arvest Bank?
Recently, Arvest announced a five-year partnership with Google Cloud to enable and accelerate our multi-year digital transformation strategy. The partnership will provide Arvest with the tools, technology, and expertise to deliver community banking in a digital world and transform the customer experience.
Arvest will overhaul its current IT architecture and systems, including the migration of Arvest’s data centers to Google Cloud, and we are undertaking a full-scale data transformation. We will also leverage Google Cloud’s artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools to enhance customer experience and streamline banking services.
Moving our operations to the cloud is a key part of Arvest’s digital transformation journey and a direct response to rapidly changing customer needs. Customers today expect streamlined digitally enabled experiences, and this partnership will help us continue to serve our communities with best-in-class tools and services, regardless of whether they choose to receive services digitally, in their local branch, or through our contact centers.
As part of the partnership, Arvest will also be decreasing our overall data center footprint with the migration of its current IT architecture to Google Cloud. Sustainability has been a core value at Google for 20 years and reducing the consumption of energy that it takes to power our data centers is something we at Arvest are excited to be able to do.
How are you Utilizing Digitalization to Easily and Quickly Identify Different Ways to Streamline your Banking Services?
As we began to implement various aspects of our transformation journey, we have found that in some cases, solving an operational efficiency problem can be the fastest way to streamline customer services. For instance, right now, we are considering using Google’s document processing platform DocAI for its ability to automate the data from loan documents and integrate them into the system. Right now, this is all done manually at Arvest, as at most banks across the industry. However, automating this process can help streamline this tedious process and allow our associates to spend more time building customer relationships and finding solutions to complex problems.
In that vein, going forward, APIs and third-party integrations will be a major strategy for our bank in our goal of meeting customers where they are and creating a more streamlined experience for customers.
As an Ending Note, What is your Advice for Other Senior Leaders and CXOs Working in the Banking Sector?
In order to succeed in this role, senior leaders need to embrace a “quick wins” mindset while being ready to adapt to change and develop strong communication skills. Although this may sound overly simplistic, it is important to be willing to adapt to change quickly, figure out how to bring your team on board, and communicate what this means for your team, as well as the company, in order to move forward together. One way I have done this is through our series of 90-day initiatives that addressed particular customer pain points. These quick plans allowed employees to see how their work was impacting change at the bank while simultaneously addressing customer pain points. It also served as a way for me to communicate updates in a timely manner and opened up opportunities for discussion.
Leaders also need to be thinking about how to develop existing talent. As technology continues to change, it is important to create an upskilling and reskilling program that aligns with your technology roadmap. Give everyone a chance to develop their own career path while ensuring they have the skills they need to meet changing demands.