"First Citizens Bank puts customers first. We are a very face-to-face business," explains Dan Hudson, senior manager of systems integration architecture. "Internally, we had a few pain points. We had five disparate loan systems that we needed to consolidate, over 200 applications that were point-to-point integrations and not very scalable, and multiple acquisitions happening at the same time. We needed a way to reduce our applications portfolio, streamline integration between systems, and quickly integrate systems from new banks. Our front office and back office processes were asynchronous and that also led to pain points.

"Our overarching business goal was to enhance products for customers and create efficiencies so we could serve them better and faster, as well as to increase agility and continue to grow. If we had not been able to remove some of these inhibitors, we would have continued with business as usual, the business pain would still exist, and it would have caused a longer time to market. The business would not have been able to continue to grow its market and customer base.

"To increase operational efficiency, our technology objectives were to build a suite of services that could be leveraged across multiple channels so we could write once and re-use many times," continues Mr. Hudson. "Our goal for reducing technical debt across the bank was to simplify our portfolio, remove some applications, standardize on a single integration platform, and retire some older technologies that were costing us more than we were getting out of them.

"We wanted to use the same platform to deliver real-time transactions for services from origination to servicing across multiple platforms: mobile, web, customer contact center. We needed to shift from a homegrown enterprise service bus (ESB) to a mature, standardized platform—and with minimal training, have our current staff ramp up to support the new system and large business initiatives. We needed an ESB leader.

"Our relationship with TIBCO started back in 2013 when we had three vendors do POCs. We picked TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks and TIBCO Messaging software for their simplicity and ability to quickly get us up and running."

In addition, First Citizens Bank turned to TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM software for fraud and credit card dispute case management, and TIBCO Spotfire geo-analytics for tracking where fraud is happening in real time.

TIBCO Professional Services helped build out a platform that includes automatic text notifications to customers. "While we have developers and analysts on site, we leveraged TIBCO professional services for at least 18 months," said Hudson.

Fast Ramp Up, Increased Customer Satisfaction

"Our customers and business partners saw that in a day we had real-time services running in our development environment. It was so fast and clean that we were able to get to market faster, and we already see that reflected in customer satisfaction," continued Hudson.

"We challenged our team to take an 18-month roadmap for credit card opening and turn it into an 18-week project. Using a set of standard services, they took a paper-based application for credit cards and turned that into an online form that's used across multiple channels. They enabled online, in-branch, and call center credit card applications in real time, giving a customer an approval within 60 seconds. It has also increased the bottom line by providing better cross-sell opportunities for our bankers.

Company and Industry Recognition

"At the end of the transformation project, our team won the Holding award, the highest award in the bank. And now that my team has won a Trailblazer award, it's like winning all over again."

Reduced Time for Auto Loans

After reducing the time to open credit cards and seen the success from that program, the bank will now implement the same set of services for auto loans.

"The future for us is continuing to grow our service offerings and expand our use of TIBCO products," said Hudson.