The Future of Payments

State of Banking 26 BANKING PERSPECTIVES QUARTER 4 2018 technology disruptors – including GreenSky, SummitView, and LightStream. What advantages do you think the FinTechs bring to banks, and what challenges have you had integrating FinTech products with SunTrust? ROGERS: I’m a big believer in the “coopetition” model. What’s most important is to recognize and build capabilities from the client backward versus from your infrastructure forward. I think that’s certainly the right approach. Innovation is part of our culture; we spend a lot of time thinking about what clients want and then how we deliver. We’re also not afraid to disrupt ourselves. I think that has to be one of the starting points; you have to be willing to accept that you may be disrupting your business, but what you’re really doing is understanding and responding to client needs. LightStream is a good example. We were an early adopter of being a digital bank, and we just did it on the asset management side through LightStream. LightStream now is part of our offerings. In addition to being an important part of our unique digital offering, it’s a key component through our branches, suntrust. com, and all of the SunTrust channels. It’s a really good example of integration. You mentioned we have things like SummitView on the private wealth side. We also recently launched an online SmartGuide application in mortgage, a really good use of APIs. And back to your other question, it’s a really good way to leverage scale and build something that’s very responsive to clients. Today, well over 50% of our clients are now engaging with us on the mortgage side in a digital capacity. ARAMANDA: Has it been a challenge to acquire these smaller startup technology firms and assimilate them into the bank culture? Are you having any cultural issues? ROGERS: If everyone starts with the same mission, which is serving clients in a fast, safe, efficient way, then all other problems are small. If we’re aligned on big issues when it comes to culture, then smaller issues are just things that we have to challenge ourselves to do better. In many cases, we’re adopting strategies from our partners into our company versus insisting that they adopt strategies from SunTrust. Again, with that underpinning of “we’re client-first focused and we’re going to do it in a safe and sustainable environment.” ARAMANDA: My last question regards SummitView. It has a data aggregation tool for wealth management. We talk about data aggregation at our board meetings, and it’s a topic around the industry. What have you learned from SummitView and the benefits that it provides? ROGERS: If we start from the client backward, at the end of the day, this is the client’s data. It’s not our data. Our obligation is to make sure that the data is safe and secure. Our view is that clients are the owners of their own data, and what we want to do is provide tools that they can use to consolidate and manage. We don’t think of SummitView as a data aggregation tool because it does much more than aggregate data. SummitView is a goals-based financial planning tool that includes data aggregation as one of the elements. We view it as an opportunity to talk to clients and help them think about the more comprehensive picture of their financial needs. We provide a vault, as an example, for housekeeping key documents – another safe and secure place for clients to put some of their important digital documents that they can have access to. SummitView allows the adviser and the client to sit down and have a more comprehensive view of their portfolio and their needs without forgetting anything. If they have an account somewhere else and they may have an insurance product they want to bring into play, or real estate, whatever it may be, we want to make sure that we’re looking at all those elements so that we’re not giving advice in a vacuum. We’re giving advice that’s broad-based and with the client’s full interest in mind. ARAMANDA: Thank you, as always, for your time ROGERS: Thanks, Jim, for all the work you do for the industry. n