Innovator: Frank Sorrentino, CEO, North Jersey Community Bank
Recent Innovations: iPad adoption for all executives; rollout of mobile banking for BlackBerrys, iPhones and iPads
Why They Matter: iPad use makes executives more productive, board meeting paperless; mobile banking is a competitive necessity
What's Next: A paperless loan department, with the use of document imaging and workflow software
Frank Sorrentino, CEO of $630 million-assets North Jersey Community Bank in Englewood Cliffs, has become so personally enamored of the Apple iPad, he's given one to each of his executive officers and runs iPad-based board meetings.
The first thing that interested Sorrentino in the iPad was the plethora of apps available for it, along with the small footprint and long battery life. "I almost look to it as a laptop replacement," he says. "Here's the real kicker: instant on and instant off. If I'm sitting at the diner having a cup of coffee, waiting for a client who's ten minutes late, that gives me ten minutes of time to work, as opposed to waiting eight minutes for a machine to boot up." Sorrentino reads periodicals and newspapers on the device and keeps his email, contacts and calendar there.
Once he saw the value of the iPad, he felt strongly there were other senior executives at the bank who would welcome the productivity improvements he had gained, so he rolled it out to the entire management team.
Sorrentino began reading board meeting documents on his iPad. "One day, I watched our team putting together board meeting documents," he recalls. "Our board packages have anywhere from 200-400 pages in them, half of them typically in color: charts, graphs, spreadsheets, Word documents, etc. It would take a team of 2-3 people half a day to put all this stuff together, to collate it and get it together. Our board meeting would last 45 minutes to an hour, then it would all go into the shredder. I would think, what a horrible waste of resources and time, and what a bad thing for the environment; I can't imagine how many trees we killed." Sorrentino figured that by replacing all those printed documents with iPads, the bank could recover the cost of the iPads within a few months.
The iPads don't leave the bank, which is helpful considering the sensitive nature of board documents. "This is just in pace of handing you a binder with 400 pages in it," Sorrentino notes.
Bank employees are also using iPads in sales meetings; prospective clients will be handed a pre-loaded iPad so they can follow along with a presentation. Some banks balk at the expense of giving iPads out to employees. "Those are the same guys who didn't think computers were going to be around for long," Sorrentino quips. He also believes iPad-based mortgages are coming.
In another innovation at NJCB, Sorrentino is taking the entire loan department paperless through imaging and workflow from FIS Global, the bank's core provider. "This will eliminate all the paper that is generated from appraisals to underwriting documents to originating documents," he says. "This will all be housed on our servers and available via electronic means. That will dramatically cut down on the file storage space we need and allow for an easier flow of information." This technology will also assist regulatory exams - allowing them to happen seamlessly and possibly offsite, he says, by giving examiners their own login credentials.
"Regulators usually pull a team together from multiple states all over the country," Sorrentino points out. "Now people can sit in their homes and look at those documents on their iPads." Some parts of the examination may still need to take place in person, he says.
Sorrentino expects to implement the document and workflow technology by the end of the third quarter. The bank already uses imaged check deposit at the branches, again using FIS software.
NJCB also recently launched mobile banking for the Blackberry, iPhone, and of course, the iPad in a joint venture with FIS.
How does Sorrentino foster innovation at his bank? "Our bank from inception has always embraced technology. We understand it's the great equalizer. We need technology here at North Jersey Community Bank to compete with large national players. Most community banks are good at hugging, shaking hands and kissing babies. If you add to that our technological prowess, that separates us from other banks."
