Where are they now? 6 Digital Banker of the Year honorees

December 26, 2023 12:30 PM

Top row left to right: Michelle Moore, Tim Spence, Ankit Bhatt. Bottom row left to right: Patrick Sells, Dontá Wilson, Allan Rayson

A look back at honorees of American Banker's Digital Banker of the Year award reveals that rising up the ranks in digital at a bank pays dividends. Some of our winners have gone on to replicate their success at other institutions or fintechs; one even became CEO of his bank.

In 2023, American Banker rebranded and expanded its Digital Banker of the Year awards to Innovators of the Year, to encompass banking and fintech innovators of all stripes, including neobank founders and technology vendors, rather than evaluating only those who spearheaded significant digital initiatives at a bank.

Here's a look back at our six most recent Digital Bankers of the Year, where they are now and the innovations — from sophisticated virtual assistants to revamped mobile apps — that put their banks on the map.

Michelle Moore, Digital Banker of the Year 2017

As head of digital at Bank of America, Michelle Moore led the development of Erica — one of the first sophisticated virtual assistants at a bank and one that is consistently used as a barometer today to evaluate other institutions' efforts. It is still one of the very few to offer two-way voice conversation, according to financial services competitive intelligence firm Keynova Group.

Moore also improved the Bank of America mobile app by scrutinizing middling reviews in the app stores and installing new features, such as a manual option for remote deposit capture. During Moore's two and a half years as head of digital, Bank of America's active mobile users increased by about 50%, according to her 2017 Digital Banker of the Year profile.

"Though Erica will be one of the few voice-based digital assistants offered by a bank, this type of artificial intelligence — basically chatbots — is one of the hottest areas of the technology sector in general," wrote American Banker in 2017.

Now Moore is trying to replicate the same success at Wells Fargo.

In December 2020, Wells Fargo hired Moore as digital platform leader. Revamping the Wells Fargo app is one major project in her purview. In February, the bank announced LifeSync, a mechanism that lets users set up and track goals, interact with their financial advisors, review their financial "vitals" (for instance, their net worth and portfolio performance) and take in market commentary and research through a news feed. Fargo, the app's new virtual assistant that accepts voice commands, followed a few months later. In September, Fargo added Spanish-speaking capabilities.

Tim Spence, Digital Banker of the Year 2018

The future CEO of Fifth Third Bancorp was recognized in 2018 for his work beefing up technology at the Cincinnati bank as head of payments, strategy and digital solutions. He oversaw the configuration of agile teams to work on Fifth Third's online banking channels and mobile apps, which resulted in an enhanced bill pay experience, the ability to withdraw cash at ATMs using the app, a proprietary app called Momentum that helped users pay off student loans faster by rounding up purchases and more. Spence also spearheaded investments of more than $100 million in fintech companies and numerous partnerships, such as home improvement loan facilitator GreenSky.

His responsibilities have grown from there.

In October 2020, the $213 billion-asset bank promoted Spence to president, where he would handle all business lines and regional banking as well as continue to oversee strategy. In 2022 he was announced as successor to Fifth Third CEO Greg Carmichael. Spence told American Banker at the time that he would continue to invest in market expansion, digital capabilities and nonbank acquisitions, "to sustain the discipline and focus that has made us as successful as we have been," he said. Starting in 2024, Spence's responsibilities will become heftier: He will add chairman to his title on January 2.

Under Spence, the bank's executive leadership is continuing to execute on a vision for Fifth Third that began during Carmichael's tenure, along with managing a healthy risk profile while positioning itself against rising interest rates and limiting higher expenses, said Scott Siefers, a managing director at Piper Sandler, in a December interview.

"Across the board, they get high marks for the transformation that Fifth Third has undergone over the last several years," Siefers said.

Ankit Bhatt, Digital Banker of the Year 2019

Ankit Bhatt, senior vice president for omnichannel experience at U.S. Bancorp in Minneapolis, earned praise from American Banker for his efforts to move the superregional into the "big leagues" of megabanks. When rebuilding or redesigning digital properties, including the website and app, he tasked his team with intensive research into the customer experience to understand why, for example, adoption of its mobile check deposit feature was lagging behind its competitors. (The answer: Customers found the limits on how much they could deposit to be low, and were stymied by slow and error-prone image-capture software.) In 2018, 14% of checks deposited at U.S. Bank came in via the mobile app, up from 8% a year earlier.

At the same time, he led a redesign of the bank's website, which boosted mortgage originations, among other initiatives.

As chief digital officer for the consumer and small-business segments, Bhatt has since pushed new innovations forward such as the mobile app's virtual assistant, called Smart Assistant, which is now fully bilingual in Spanish. He helped lead the digital conversion of more than 1.2 million customers from Union Bank to U.S. Bank after its acquisition, which $668 billion-asset U.S. Bank completed in December 2022. He leads the digital team responsible for the bank's cobrowse feature and for the launch of digital wallet Paze. Under his watch, U.S. Bank also automated direct deposit switching in early 2023.

Patrick Sells, Digital Banker of the Year 2020

Patrick Sells' tenure as chief innovation officer at Quontic Bank in New York City also marked the beginning of his banking and fintech career.

Sells, who previously operated as an independent marketing consultant, was hired by Steven Schnall, who at the time was Quontic's CEO, to revamp the bank's digital efforts, especially after it came under scrutiny by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for an overreliance on wholesale funding. Within months of Sells joining the bank in 2018, which has $561 million of assets, Quontic had enabled online account opening. Sells also led the charge on a custom accounting and document management system, the Quontic.Works system, to more easily integrate new technology from partners, and QuonticMax, which let customers spread funds in $250,000 chunks across partner institutions to provide FDIC insurance while maintaining one account.

The ideas he germinated with Schnall, including a wearable payment ring and a consumer deposit product tied to cryptocurrency, later became reality.

Sells parlayed his cryptocurrency experience to his next role at NYDIG, a provider of investment and technology solutions tied to bitcoin and other digital assets. He became the startup's head of bank solutions in December 2020. Two years later, Sells launched a company called True Digital that aimed to connect bankers with reputable vendors. In November, he lured Stuart Cook away from his post as chief innovation officer at Valley Bank in Wayne, New Jersey, to become True Digital's CEO. The platform has more than 300 banks reviewing the vendors they use, and 4,000 unique vendors cataloged on the database. True Digital Showcase, which the company launched in October, helps banks turn in-house technology into marketable products.

Dontá Wilson, Digital Banker of the Year 2021

Dontá Wilson released a flurry of products and services as chief digital and client experience officer of Truist Financial in Charlotte as its heritage brands, SunTrust and BB&T, were merging. That included an all-new mobile app, an innovation center with "client journey rooms" and the adoption of cloud computing and application programming interfaces.

The decision to create a new mobile banking experience from scratch while going through a merger was unusual, American Banker reported at the time, because often banks that are merging choose technology from one of the legacy banks. Wilson felt that the combined brands could build something better. He and his team incorporated artificial intelligence-driven advice into the new app and developed a robo-advisor called Truist Invest. He also conceived of client journey rooms for designers, architects, engineers and business risk and compliance people to work with customers in developing new products and services, all housed within the Charlotte-based innovation center.

Yet the integration did not go as smoothly as expected. Complaints lodged against Truist with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau spiked following the merger. Customers vented online and to American Banker about problems accessing their cash, using their new debit cards and reaching customer service.

Wilson has since moved on from the purely technological side of the $548 billion-asset Truist. He became the head of retail community banking and marketing in March 2022 to oversee branches, along with mortgages, card services, retail payments, deposit products and marketing efforts. But as the bank has been burdened by rising expenses and an aggressive cost-cutting plan, Wilson's role is changing once again. In November, the bank announced that Wilson would take on a broader role as chief consumer and small-business banking officer and oversee consumer, premier and small-business banking, virtual client service centers and Truist's 2,000-plus branches across the Southeast, mid-Atlantic and Texas. His duties also include core deposit and loan products, consumer capital markets, national consumer franchise businesses, marketing, client experience strategy and digital banking.

Allan Rayson, Digital Banker of the Year 2022

The commercially focused Encore Bank had a digital and "branch-lite" strategy from the start, when the founders rebranded and recapitalized it from Capital Bank in Little Rock in 2019. Allan Rayson, chief innovation officer and chief technology officer, was instrumental in building its technology stack from scratch — a process that is more complex in commercial rather than consumer banking. He chose fintech partners that were nimble and often young startups, so they can grow and evolve with the bank. That included Hawthorn River for its loan operation system; Mantl for speedy digital account opening and ZSuite Technologies for its digital escrow and subaccounting product, ZEscrow; and CollateralEdge, a company that helps community and regional banks strengthen the credit profiles on individual corporate loans.

Rayson's current focus is on the liabilities side of Encore's balance sheet and integrating technology that will boost Encore's deposit franchise, including with historically deposit-rich businesses such as association banking, title companies and property managers. Encore has $4 billion of assets.

"We have definitely had our heads down in 2023 with all the changes in the macro environment," said Rayson via email. "The Fed's actions over the last year and the rapid rise in the federal funds rate have definitely been challenging, but in my opinion have made us so much better as an organization."