When First Horizon merged with IberiaBank and became a financial behemoth, it was left with a large, challenging task — systems integration, which the institution has been steadily working on, and expects to complete in February 2022.
In typical bank acquisitions, explained Randy Bryan, First Horizon’s chief transformation officer, the process is simpler. But because this was a merger-of-equals, and the two banks were of similar sizes, each had their own systems they used for an array of business segments and processes.
“With pretty much every system within the company, there was a system we had from the IberiaBank side,” he said. “And there was a system we had from First Horizon.”
So staffers had to go through the various systems and carefully decide which ones should be selected for the merged company, based on a myriad of factors that ranged from system capability and age to costs.
“As part of our merger, we stepped back and looked at all aspects of our business, from top to bottom,” Bryan said. “We put into place different models we felt were going to be most effective for the combined company.”
Some systems were easier to select than others. And one of the earliest First Horizon chose was the nCino bank operating system, a cloud-based platform that IberiaBank used primarily for commercial loan origination and the onboarding of treasury management products.
Made by North Carolina-based financial tech company nCino Inc, IberiaBank had used the platform since 2017, and the decision to use it for the combined company was easy. Even before the merger was announced, First Horizon had considered adding it.
“We had to go through and do a higher degree of evaluation on some other things that we didn’t necessarily need to do with nCino,” Bryan said. “Some of that work was already processed.”
Interest in nCino
But why was nCino so enticing for First Horizon and IberiaBank?
Part of it is the company’s heavy emphasis on technology, an area that First Horizon has focused on post-merger. As Paul Clarkson, nCino’s EVP of U.S. financial institutions, told MBJ, “the only constant right now is change in terms of technology.” Each year, he said, the company puts 26% of revenue back into its platform and offers two new releases annually.
Going hand-in-hand with this is the platform’s accessibility on mobile devices. Though bankers still do deeper financial analyses on laptops, Clarkson maintained, much of their work is being done on smartphones and tablets — a sentiment echoed by Bryan.
“That’s really important,” he said. “One of the things we’re very focused on at First Horizon is to leverage platforms to provide more mobility for our bankers and give them the capability to spend more time in front of clients, versus needing to be in office and doing things on a computer.”
Integration timeline
Currently, bank staffers who came from IberiaBank are using the nCino platform they worked with pre-merger, while those who had already been with First Horizon are using the combination of processes for commercial loan origination and treasury management they had before it.
In February, the bank will implement a new version of the nCino platform for the combined institution, a change that Bryan said will be more noticeable for employees than clients. But he maintained that the company is ensuring staffers feel ready to use the new program.
“Change, even change for the better, is not something people universally embrace. So, we have a very intentional process … to help them understand the benefits to them and their clients,” he said. “We want to make sure they are well-versed and well-trained in things they need to do, so they feel comfortable when the time comes to start using new system.”
Though right now First Horizon is still using the nCino platform for commercial loan origination and the onboarding of treasury management products, it plans to use nCino for more in the future. For example, the company has an AI offering that helps with analytics and has an automated spreading capability, for things like cash deterrents, personal financial statements, and unstructured data.
Employees can take pictures of documents, and they’ll be autopopulated within nCino’s financial analysis solutions — potentially saving them time.
“That’s not something we’re using today, but definitely something we intend to use in the future,” Bryan said. “We see a lot of benefits for our clients, and associates as well."
