Katherine Weislogel of Synovus on trends in treasury and payment solutions

Katherine Weislogel, head of treasury and payment solutions at Synovus, has a dual role at the bank, As its head of treasury, she helps clients optimize and control their business's cash flow, liquidity and funding. As the head of payments, Weislogel and her team are navigating the demands for real-time payments and keeping their clients up-to-date on the latest developments. One of the biggest challenges facing all banks, she said, is to keep up with rapidly changing technology and make sure that clients and staffers are continually upskilling to keep up.


Transcription:

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.

Mary Ellen Egan (00:09):

I am Mary Ellen Egan, senior editor Women's Programs at American Banker, and I'm here today with Katherine Weislogel, who's the head of Treasury and Payment Solutions at Synovus. Katherine, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to meet you.

Katherine Weislogel (00:22):

Thank you for having me.

Mary Ellen Egan (00:24):

So I want to talk a little bit about first your role at Synovus and what it encompasses.

Katherine Weislogel (00:29):

Sure. So about five years ago, I came in with the mantra to take what they currently have, which wasn't very much of a team and to create this entire payments team for the future. And so, essentially I had to take it apart and put it all back together over the last five years. And so the role encompasses all the treasury management and it also encompasses all the international business and all the commercial card business for all the segments of which we serve.

Mary Ellen Egan (01:00):

Wow. How big is your team then now?

Katherine Weislogel (01:02):

So the day I started, we had 59, and we integrated the FCB [Florida Community Bank] 30 days later, which got me about four more head count because they were dispersed. And so now we sit at 135. So we have almost doubled the team in the five years.

Mary Ellen Egan (01:21):

And then, so let's talk a little bit about the treasury management side of your job. So what exactly that does that entail?

Katherine Weislogel (01:28):

So it's a catch all of management solutions. So it would be all your receivable solutions such as lockbox, your scanners, ACH, your typical incoming flows for payments. And then on the payable side, it would be wires, ACH, check writing, disbursements, commercial card. So we do all inflow outflow and then we do fraud mitigation solutions and information management solutions on top of it.

Mary Ellen Egan (01:56):

How does that work? What are some of the big concerns for businesses with their cash management flow today?

Katherine Weislogel (02:03):

There's a lot of concerns because we're in a completely different environment than we were actually we're about one year from, I'll say the banking crisis, liquidity banking crisis, where everyone really had to look under the hood at everything and on their cash flows because now they were having to figure out what they're going to do with excess funds. Rates became important, fraud became important. Fraud really has amped up since the pandemic and has continued to do that. So they're finding new ways. So as customers are looking at their entire setup today, they're looking under every rock because they're going to have to move their receivables in faster and they need to slow down how they're making their payments, their payables. And so they're looking for solutions to help in that overall cash conversion cycle. And that's what my team does. We come in and we consult with their team on how to look at their days receivable outstandings, look at their days payable outstandings, and then how does that translate to their bottom line? So it's a big concern for customers right now because they're having to do more with less. And so we sell the solutions that can essentially not take the place, necessarily of needing to hire more people, but we put scalable models into place that don't go on vacation, that don't retire, and don't take knowledge with them. So those businesses can continue for scale and growth and not have to worry about when folks are retiring and they're having to hire that next set.

Mary Ellen Egan (03:29):

And what is the size of businesses do you work with?

Katherine Weislogel (03:32):

So when we put this together five years ago, it was really in alignment with bank's overall strategy, which was really to move upstream. And so at the time when I came in five years ago, we were just getting the wholesale bank, think about middle market type of companies started, and off the ground we are more of a community bank, more commercial retail based. So today my team covers, I would say, from the brand new startup retail customer all the way up to what now is the most complex corporate investment banking customer. So we have a wide range of customers, so retail, commercial, wholesale, private wealth and corporate investment banking clients.

Mary Ellen Egan (04:11):

And I assume for each of those segments, their needs differ. Which makes it really complex what you and your team do.

Katherine Weislogel (04:18):

It does, because every segment, well, everything's moving digitally based, so that is a commonality, but the needs within each of them become way more complex as you go up. Volume driven is one of them. Complexities with their ERP systems and how they need to reconcile become more complex as they go upstream from a retail client, their needs may be more package-based. It may be I need to do an ACH, I need to deposit a check into a scanner. Very simple needs, where a corporate investment banking client may need a lockbox, they may need wire initiation APIs into the system and ERP integrations from their system into the bank. So there's way more needs as you go up. Our challenge is making sure, since there's only so many resources, how do we bring the right resources to bear that are going to affect all of the segments of which we cover? And in some cases, the strategy has to be for certain segments and we just have to be okay with that. It's going to only cover the corporate investment banking client base.

Mary Ellen Egan (05:21):

And so is there a difference between when you deal with international businesses or global businesses and just domestic ones as well?

Katherine Weislogel (05:27):

So, we have an international arm and they work very closely with our domestic side of the business as well. And so that's our opportunity actually. So we really didn't get the international business off the ground. I'll say, I call it the re-imagination of the business, until about two years ago. And we are now starting to see the fruits of that labor come to bear. We have put in a whole new platform and that single sign-on platform is accessed through the single sign-on into our commercial portal. So I can go into my domestic commercial portal and access into my international portal so I can transact all of my business in one location. So that makes it really nice. We haven't even touched the surface on really bringing our international strategy to our domestic. It's a huge opportunity for us.

Mary Ellen Egan (06:16):

So let's talk a little bit about payments. So real-time payments, how is that changing? I mean, you spoke a little bit about how digital has changed so much about banking and now the real-time payments demand.

Katherine Weislogel (06:27):

It's interesting. So, last week we were in Fort Lauderdale with our customer advisory board and we are real big on the voice of the customer. And this group is our second meeting. And you would've thought, we've been with them for years because very outspoken, which we love. We love to gather that voice. And we asked them about real-time payments last week. I get into the bank jargons into real-time payments last week last, and they were all very blank stared, which really surprised me because we're pushing very hard within our back office to get RTP ready to get because there's a readiness of receive pay and then get ready for RFI. And it's a change of mindset for banks. I mean, you now have to go from, or you may have cut your day at 8:00 PM to a 24/7, 365 day shop in your back office from a staffing standpoint, from a fraud litigant risk litigant.

(07:22):

So, it's a big undertaking for a bank when they decide to make the decision to go to a real-time payments. So with that, you got to make sure you've got the client demand if you're going to go to all out on this effort. And so when we brought it up last week, they were somewhat blank stared, and it wasn't because they didn't know about it, they just didn't know enough about it. And so, it is what we suspected in some senses, there is an education and training need not only for our clients, but what we're also finding is for our own employees. So it's coming on so fast, it came on big time. Everyone kind of sat on the sidelines and watched all the big players kind of like, let's see what happens. But now it's getting to a point where everyone's got to jump in. And so there is a major training and education need.

(08:09):

It's not that our clients don't have a demand for it, they just don't know enough. And so that's on us. That onus falls to the bank to upskill our talent, which is coming down fast and furious on us, to make sure that they can have those appropriate conversations and level setting. What does moving to real-time payments mean for your cashflow? And there are use cases for it today that are gambling, insurance, gaming. I mean, those are the big use cases today, and health care is jumping in on it. And they're only going to continue through the cycle. But you do have to get into the RTP game. And we're really trying to figure out strategically how we're going to mirror the client and the customer, our employee training and engagement and understanding with the infrastructure expense on the backside, to make sure that we're mirroring it correctly.

Mary Ellen Egan (09:05):

Right, because that's an interesting point because you think, look, it will affect obviously their cashflow. All of a sudden what they were banking on would take 2, 3, 4 days or whatever, is now immediate. So that has to be a big hurdle for clients to kind of get their head around. And then also the risk of fraud where they paid somebody that shouldn't have gotten paid.

Katherine Weislogel (09:27):

And not getting it back.

Mary Ellen Egan (09:28):

And not getting it back.

Katherine Weislogel (09:30):

They're all familiar with the Zelles and the Venmos. They all understand how that works and they understand the risk around it. But then when you start dabbling in, what will you do it for your business? It's a very different, I'd have to look at that. But in their defense, one thing that came up very strongly last week was there is an ACH same day, and that's two windows a day with the Fed and it's up to a million dollars. And so for them, a lot of these companies are like, that's sufficient. If I'm going to do a real-time payment over a million dollars, I'd be very hard pressed to do it right in real time today. And again, understanding training and how that affects their cashflow. But we have many clients who still use wire. I mean, it may surprise you, it surprises me every year when I see our product year over year changes, wire continues to rise, really. And it just shocks me.

Mary Ellen Egan (10:26):

Why do you think that is?

Katherine Weislogel (10:28):

Immediacy, understanding? I think it gets back to training. It's one of the most expensive ways to send a payment, but people view it as immediate and safe.

Mary Ellen Egan (10:39):

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I guess so because you do think about, I had to do a wire payment to my brother a year or two ago, and I was like, I've never done one before. And I'm like, this is kind of laborious and costly, and I thought there has to be some easier way.

Katherine Weislogel (10:52):

Well, and then I thought when same day ACH was coming on board and then they kept raising the limits, I thought, this is going to cut into our wire. So we have to start thinking about strategically our payment mix. And so it hasn't at all, but as real-time payments come on, we're going to again have to really understand the payment mix differences because there will be a pool. The question is, well, will it go completely away anytime soon. Probably not, because again, there's just not enough people that completely understand or are comfortable with real-time payments that's going to change. I mean, now that Fed Now's live, there's just more information out and the banks are all really jumping into it now. So they're going to have more consultants on the street talking to the companies about it, and then it will start creating demand. But I don't think your ACH or wires are ever going to go completely away. Just like we've been told cash is going to go away forever, checks are going to go away forever. That's not happening. So actually, I just saw a report, I think it was an EY study last week that showed wholesale lockbox of all things paper-based payments year over year, highest growth of new solutions in the Midwest.

Mary Ellen Egan (12:09):

Really?

Katherine Weislogel (12:09):

I was shocked, of course, wire was up there too, right? Yeah. So it's what you're comfortable with, and that's where my team comes in. We have to be that consultant for our customers and really because it does affect cashflow and how it affects your bottom line, and there is a comfort level with what we always know. And then these new technologies are coming on so fast and it's just a comfort level.

Mary Ellen Egan (12:34):

Are there any other trends we're seeing besides real-time payments in the payment solution area?

Katherine Weislogel (12:38):

We are, and this one kind of concerns me a little bit, it's ERP integrations downstream. So about 18 months ago, we started seeing the trend of clients starting to ask for ERP integrations, open banking APIs. We thought, okay, we saw it in the middle market or our upper end, our complex clients. I told my team, PL got 12 months and we got to get ready. We started putting some pressure on some of our partners. What are you doing to get ready on ERP integrations? We needed to either partner with an integrator or we are going to have to push our commercial platform folks to really help us. And it got to be about 12 months. And I went to the Data Insights Council and they put up a slide. I'll never forget this day. They put it up on the screen and they said, ERP integrations, open APIs.

(13:31):

When they went out and talked to all of our customers, it's down into the 20 billion. We're talking lower middle market into the commercial space now. We'll move their banking relationship, will move their banking relationship for an ERP integration and they'll take their loan with them. That is a huge change from where we've come from. It used to always be you have your loan and the treasury follows. Things are shifting and it's shifting quickly because streamline speed, easy to do business with is becoming more important to our customers. And so we're really having to rethink our roadmap, how we're going to market and adjust and make sure that we're putting our resources and our funding in the right places that our clients actually need and want. But that is concerning. It's moving down very, very fast. We're going to announce an ERP partnership, integrated partnership here in the not too far distant future. We have to, which we're excited about. And then we're actively looking at open banking and APIs for our customers as well. And we have to open it up because if we don't, clients are going to leave us.

Mary Ellen Egan (14:45):

Right?

Katherine Weislogel (14:46):

But it's happening fast, faster than I thought it would.

Mary Ellen Egan (14:50):

That's a little bit jarring.

Katherine Weislogel (14:52):

When they put that up, I literally was texting my head of product and I'm like, I took a picture of the site. I'm like, we got to move faster.

Mary Ellen Egan (15:00):

And how is it just a little change? How is it managing a team that's mostly remote because people all because payments is obviously it's 24/ 7.

Katherine Weislogel (15:11):

So we have product and distribution, sales distribution within product. You have all of the product team, you have all the technical sales support that go along with that. And on the sales side, you have all your frontline sales folks, but then you have, I'll say, an army of people behind that frontline that helps support that sales model. So you'll have frontline, you'll have sales support, you'll have account management servicing, and then we have the implementation team. And so outside of the frontline, they're hybrids. Everyone else is pretty much remote and they're all over the country, even though our segment is in the Southeast. So since the pandemic, that really opened up things for us. And it had to, because as you see, the war on talent is still here, especially in our space because payments is moving so quickly ,so there is a war on getting the best people in the space to take things forward because how you think about treasury from years before isn't how it's going to be going forward.

(16:06):

And so we've even dabbled in, do we look at fintech players in more traditional sales roles or do we look at core banking folks that have been trained in that? So it's a mix, right? It's going to be dependent on roles. But for us, we use teams a lot. We just, actually, all the banks are under expense control. So this year we decided to do our sale, our total treasury conference for all of my business. We did it on teams coming off of last year. We did this big deal. We did it like an industry conference in person event. And I said to my team, I don't know how we're going to top it, but we're going to have fun doing it. So we did a superhero theme, everyone dressed up. Oh fun. We were all superheroes. We had Kevin Brown talk about the hero effect and really kick it off with the big bang.

(16:55):

And we launched our entire strategy of what we were going to do in '24 and '25 to the teams, which included product. It's kind of three pillars, innovation now and into the future. Scaling our business for growth, which we have to do, especially in the growth trajectory that we're in, and then how we're deepening relationships because that's critical right now. You have to make sure that you are touching your customers. And our advisory board shared that with us. So for us, if you look at those three buckets, you can do a lot of those type of things remotely. And then we just have to make sure that we're feeding our frontline sales teams with what they need to be successful. But we come together, we do things like the sales conference. We do all team meetings. I tell my team all the time, you got to pull the teams together.

(17:46):

If you don't, they're going to be out in remote world. And it's easy to then leave without a tie into the team and the vision and the mission. And so we pull them in often in team events, we do pods—we call them pods— in our Birmingham hub or Miami or Atlanta and do fun things. Or I'll go in, I remember I went into Birmingham last year and I'm like, order Jimmy John's for whoever wants to show up into market. Come have 'em come in and let's just talk. And I tell you what, we had a full room and then I think I shared with you earlier, they were so excited. They're like, we love seeing everybody. But then if I say, well, come on in more often, they're like, no, we don't really want to do that. So it's still a little arms length. I'm hoping I can shorten that a little bit and get more folks in. More often it's coming, but folks are like, we continue to have bottom line results. We continue to execute through our plan. So for me, it works. It's working today. The minute something doesn't, we're not executing through, we're not hitting the bottom line results, we're having high turnover, then we got to reevaluate. But right now, I mean we haven't lost anybody. I mean it's, knock on wood, it's going really well. Oh good.

Mary Ellen Egan (19:00):

So let's talk a little bit, the elephant in everybody's room now is generative AI. So for one, how is Synovus using it or maybe not yet, and how they are, and then what the impact do you think that will have for the overall market?

Katherine Weislogel (19:13):

So, I was really surprised when the bank put out a note and said, we're going to offer up ChatGPT to all of our employees. And I'm like, sign me up. And so we are, all of our employees are on it, and there's some security features to it. But I tell you what, I had to put in a couple, we have our chairman award recognition this week, and I wanted to put in my submissions. I had all these data points on folks. I put it all in, write a writeup, 250 words, and I listed everything about this person came right back. It was a beautiful writeup. That person ended up winning. So I was super excited and I give all the credit to chat GBT, but it's time saver and I don't even use it to the extent I probably should be using it.

(20:01):

But more and more of our team is latching onto it and they're liking it. We have some, Microsoft has the Copilot and we have some piloting of Copilot in our tech group going on right now. And that can return emails for you. We can evaluate conversations. It's endless there. And so I have been begging our head of technology. I'm like, let me be on it. I could use this. But the efficiency gains not only in our back office but for our frontline are going to be huge when it does explode out. I mean, think about customer service and you think about all the robotics today. I mean, we're just getting going on it. I mean, we just launched a solution last year called TPS Connect, which is end-to-end seamless flow of all of our implementation. So we realize revenue four days faster by streamlining—no paper, no email, no nothing.

(20:55):

It just flows through the system end to end. Robotics is behind it. And then AI will certainly start to take over as part of this. So it's all coming. We have so many use cases that we're looking at right now. We don't have them in production necessarily yet, but we're looking at all of them because as you can imagine, the security controls around it are great. But from the efficiency gains in the middle office and the back office, think about reading documents. We have a trade business in our international side, think about all the documents we get. And so AI can help read and pull off the information and move things through so much faster. 20 to 30% of our current vendor partners today have some form of gen AI in what they're doing today that we work with. So it's coming. It's definitely coming.

Mary Ellen Egan (21:46):

So far it sounds like it's mostly internal use, it's not customer facing.

Katherine Weislogel (21:49):

Yet. Not yet. Not yet. Now we have machine learning type of tools in our AR side. So some of our solutions do have AI that through our partners. So that 20 to 30% has, but the bank has got the use cases that they're looking at, but we haven't put them into production just yet. But it's going to come fast and furious.

Mary Ellen Egan (22:13):

And I think it kind of seems a natural in some ways for customer service, because those are really high burnout jobs. They're very difficult because you're not dealing with somebody in their happiest moment. They're usually, they're calling to complain about something. And so I think that if there's a way to alleviate some of that stress off of that job where I guess maybe you do the regular, the check comes in and they kind of triage you and then figure out where you need to go.

Katherine Weislogel (22:37):

A big one that I'm super interested in is self-service. So think about that. You log into your portal. I don't have to make a phone call anymore. I don't have to send an email. I can go right in, put my request in self-service and AI then can move it through our systems or identify the need, solve it right away, answer your questions right away. So there's so many different things that it can do to help, not necessarily remove people from the process, but move things faster. And then we don't have to hire so many people. So the cost savings that AI is going to bring to us, it's going to be enormous. We're just getting going on it. Right.

Mary Ellen Egan (23:17):

Is there anything we haven't touched on that you think we should discuss? Anything top of mind for your bank or your customers?

Katherine Weislogel (23:26):

Sure. I mean, as we started thinking about our roadmap and my boss asked me often, Katherine, firm up that three to five year roadmap because it's constantly changing, constantly. And I said to him the other day, I'm like, I can give you a solid three year roadmap. I said, five year, I don't know what's going to happen. I just don't. I can give you what I think, but I cannot guarantee it. And so as we've been looking, we use a lot of the voice of the customer. Like I said, we launched our CAB, our customer advisory board, we are getting ready with our new TPS Connect implementation, we're going to launch a full survey piece around that. More voice of the customer. Are we launching? Is it what you like, what you want? How can we be better? We're constantly trying to get better and to raise the bar on our service model.

(24:11):

So as we started looking at our innovation roadmap, and it keeps changing. It is changing, and we're about to launch a solution here. Super excited about, it's been two years in the making in a partnership with some other fintechs that hopefully we're going to announce April 1st. Super excited. It'll be the only integrated payable solution that is like its kind in the market. And it came from a brainchild of folks in a whiteboard two years ago, putting it together. So that kind of creative thinking is going to have to continue and making sure that we're delivering solutions that, again, my challenge is the full gamut of all the segments of which we serve because the resources are being pulled in all parts of the bank right now. We have, we're a full service bank, and so having to pull from those same resources. So we're constantly evaluating that roadmap to make sure that we're prioritizing it correctly to what the demand is for our customers in the best use of our dollars.

(25:11):

I mean, in some cases we're having to leapfrog technology because it's moving so quickly. So it's a challenge, but it's also a fun challenge for us to try to figure out and get behind it and move forward for our customers. But as we continue to listen to our customers and delivering what they need, we just have to make sure that on the backside, through this, I'll call it evolution of this industry, we're making sure that our own employees are being given the tools to be upskilled and trained appropriately so they can manage all of this evolution on the technology side. So it's kind of a two-headed piece straight now because you get these great technologies, but if you launch it, if you don't have a sales team that's upskilled to sell it, then your clients are never going to understand what the benefits and the futures are of those. So it's a challenge for us right now and we're figuring it out and we'll get there.

Mary Ellen Egan (26:09):

Great. Well, thank you so much, Katherine, for taking the time to talk to us today. I really appreciate it. Thank you.