Generating new insights: Pat Jacobs

Pat Jacobs brought more than 15 years of experience in technology and information services when he joined Midland States Bank in March 2018 as chief digital officer. Since then, he has been at the front of the $7.8 billion-asset bank's campaign to improve how it generates insights from customer data.

Jacobs' past roles include chief technology officer at the $1.6 billion-asset First National Bank and Trust Co. in Beloit, Wisconsin, as well as chief operations officer at Alpine Bancorp, which was bought by Midland for roughly $181 million in 2018. Both roles tasked him with leading teams for developing new products and streamlining internal processes.

Jacobs has continued to work on building a more modern sales and customer delivery platform for front-office workers using higher quality data and analytics.

He transitioned more than 20 software packages and Excel tools to the Salesforce platform, significantly increasing the number of employees using the technology from 20 to 650 in a little more than three years. Last year, functionality for front-office staffers was added to the platform that provides ratings metrics, profitability scores, sales information and more.

Jacobs' work on the platform has allowed Midland to improve compliance with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act through a new data quality engine, which prevents loan documents from being made until all discrepancies have been addressed.

The bank has saved roughly $1.3 million through the use of robotic process automation. It also offers banking as a service to fintechs.