UMB Financial Corp.'s Uma Wilson saw firsthand the danger of a delayed response: A client that was dragging its heels on payments automation — just before a global crisis that would put such technology at the forefront.
"During the pandemic, they realized that they did not have the convenience of having their associates come in, open their mail, check their invoices and make the payment and have two people sign the check," said Wilson, who was just named the Kansas City, Missouri, bank's first chief information and product officer.
The job emphasizes the crucial role technology plays early in the product development cycle, as well as the need for product expertise in technology decisions. Wilson's challenge is to make sure that UMB is not in this same position as this client was — resisting change until it had no choice.
"It's extremely critical, as we think about technology and products coming together, that we have [both] under one leadership so we can drive the vision, think about transformation [and] … execution in a unified way," Wilson said.
Wilson was most recently executive vice president and director of bank product management, where she oversaw the entire product group at the $34 billion-asset bank. She is also a past honoree of American Banker's
This story is a preview of a fireside chat taking place at American Banker's Card Forum, which begins September 28.
In her previous role, Wilson was already focused on technology. Having recognized that the bank's card products provided an outdated user experience, Wilson advocated for the introduction of virtual cards and Automated Clearing House processing, with a goal of emphasizing simplicity and efficiency.
Wilson expects that by combining the product and technology teams, each group can provide the other with insights that they would not have access to otherwise. For example, the technology team will get more visibility into the customers' needs, and the product team will get a better sense of the process of bringing new technology to market.
Without that unity, the bank runs the risk of having divergent product and technology roadmaps.
The transformation at UMB reflects broader changes in the markets that the bank serves — and enables it to more nimbly adapt to future shifts. Over the course of the pandemic, many of the bank's clients needed its help to quickly pivot to a remote model. Once the previously reluctant client got on board and added the bank's digital payables technology, there was a positive domino effect, according to Wilson. She said the deployment improved security and accountability with that customer's own clients and vendors.
Many financial institutions and their clients had to adjust quickly as the pandemic set in. Similar to the beginning of the crisis, there's no set roadmap for how to emerge into a world that for most businesses will include a hybrid of centralized and remote work.
"When things come back to the 'new normal,' let's not pause and say we're done. We need to continuously … embrace change," she said.
The UMB move is an evolution in banking, "where firms team up multiple functional areas along IT and product development in multifunctional teams designed to increase agility," said Robert Meara, a senior analyst for retail and corporate banking at Celent.
In research and discussions with banks, Celent found organizational agility to be more important as the pandemic took hold. More than half of financial institutions and solution providers say agility is more important than it was a year ago.
The research and consulting firm also found that many banks have well-established software development teams that operate in a larger, decidedly non-agile organization. Thus, several bankers from large institutions say an agile transformation requires a "wholesale change" in personnel and culture.
