Holly O'Neill, president of retail banking at
When she was the chief operating officer for the Charlotte, North Carolina, company's private wealth management business, O'Neill was offered the chief client care officer job at the retail bank. At the time, she was also mulling over a presentation she had seen about research that showed women are less apt to take career risks than men.
"Women will take a future opportunity if they're very confident they have the skills to be successful, versus men who are a little less confident but they're willing to take the risk anyway," O'Neill said.
The research boosted her resolve and prompted an internal pep talk.
"I have good skills; I am very inquisitive; I'm smart. I'm going to take a leap to work in a business that I have not worked in in the past," she recalled telling herself. "I don't know what's involved, but I know I can tackle it. I really challenged myself to say: 'You know what, Holly? You can do this. You can figure it out; you can get the right team. Take the leap; take the risk and give it a try.'"
And she did, taking the chief client care officer job at the retail bank in 2018, a position she still holds. "It was one of the best career moves that I made," she said.
As chief client care officer, she said her task has been to implement a culture change for the 60,000 employees of the retail bank.
"Everyone sitting in a financial center, everyone answering the phone, we wanted to build a culture from the bottom up that was keenly focused on every single interaction we have with our clients and making sure it's good," O'Neill said. Including digital interactions, the bank has 4 billion interactions with clients each month.
The effort has been successful, she said. In 2023, the retail bank received its highest-ever rating from its client satisfaction survey.
As for her role as president of retail banking, which she was appointed to in 2021, the challenges have been consistent: how to put clients on a path to financial health, deliver "a great experience" and transform the business while applying technology in support of those objectives.
"How do you change the way you do business for the better for clients using technology without disrupting what you have?" she said.
O'Neill said she sees financial health as the foundation of what the bank does for its clients. "Just like going to the doctor for your physical health or your emotional wellness, financial health is really important to our clients for them to lead a happy and a successful life," she said.
The idea is to provide clients with the right specialists in the retail bank's 3,800 financial centers to offer one-on-one advice and to coordinate that service with the bank's mobile app and online banking. "Technology gives us the scale to deliver across all 69 million clients and then we go over and above with in-person guidance through our specialists," she said.
Another important component of client service comes from supporting a diverse and inclusive culture at
Part of that culture is established by advocating for women and their careers at the bank. "We have to reflect the communities that we serve, and women are certainly a very big piece of that," she said.
Political opposition in recent years to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives hasn't changed the bank's views on the issue, O'Neill said.
"Our thinking really hasn't shifted. The external environment will always change, but the core of what we want to do is deliver the tools and the support necessary for financial health for all of our clients," she said.
"We want to
Through her 38-year career in banking, O'Neill said she learned not to avoid challenges.
"Don't shy away from the unpopular assignments. Those tend to be the assignments that you learn the most from," she said. "They don't seem so glamorous or exciting as you're getting into it; a lot of them are hard. But you learn a lot from those assignments."
"The people, the challenge and the complexity of the business has kept it interesting for me," she said. "That's what has kept me in this industry."
