Savana takes on Woodforest National Bank integration

Woodforest National Bank is working with software-as-a-service fintech Savana to streamline operations between its core, back-office and customer channels, the bank announced Wednesday.

The partnership coincides with a massive core conversion Wood forest started three years ago, with the aim of transferring its legacy banking infrastructure to a Finxact core.

The commitment meant the time was right to also unify departments and service channels in an effort to move away from the multi-platform solution bank employees currently navigate, said Allison Carpentier, director of digital channels at The Woodlands, Texas-based bank.

“Banks, like all technology-heavy companies, have a lot of legacy systems,” she said. “You may find yourself requiring your bankers to jump through a few hoops.”

Savana CEO Mike Wolfel said the project is a significant undertaking for the Malvern, Pennsylvania-based company fintech.

As the operational layer above the bank’s core, Savana will deploy its software across Woodforest’s call center, back office and branch operations, Wolfel said.

Woodforest, which operates over 760 branches in 17 states, has been working with Savana for the past year and a half.

“Because of the large conversion, it’s certainly at the extreme end of our typical implementation time,” Wolfel said.

Savana’s typical implementation period for a fintech or de novo bank can be as little as four to five months, he added.

“With a complete system overhaul, right down to the core, there’s obviously quite a long journey ahead,” he said.

But it’s a journey that’s long overdue for the more than 40-year-old bank, said Richard Ferrara, executive vice president and chief information officer at Woodforest.

“I’ve been beating the drum about how our core needs to be replaced because of aging technology,” Ferrara said. “It’s been a mission of mine for quite some time.”

The lender chose cloud banking platform Finxact to replace its legacy stack in early 2020. Woodforest chose Savana to unify the back-office and front-office amid the transition, due to the fintech’s existing direct integrations with Finxact, Ferrara said.

“We’re in a unique position where we’re ready to replace our technology stack,” Carpentier said. “A lot of banks really can’t at this point. And so we have an opportunity here to replace it with something that’s significantly better, as opposed to just simply plastering it with another layer of technology.”

Partnering with Savana will help the bank coordinate processes across multiple systems amid the ongoing core upgrade, Carpentier said.

“When you have disparate systems and processes, it can make a holistic digital transformation very difficult,” she said.

Systems can break down when multiple platforms require bankers to jump from place to place to get approval for transactions, she added.

“Being able to do everything on one platform with rules and permissions related to those processes just makes it so much easier for bankers,” she said.

Woodforest’s technology modernization comes as traditional banks experience increased consumer demand for enhanced digital services, caused in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, Wolfel said.

“The whole pandemic was really both a driver and an enabler for a lot of banks to really take a serious look at the state of their technology, especially at the time of customer engagement across the different channels,” he said.

Savana has about 35 clients, including challengers Primis Bank and Battle Bank, as well as traditional firms Live Oak Bank and First Horizon Bank.

Among the regional and larger community banks Savana works with, Wolfel said he sees a consistent theme — many firms recognize the need to modernize their systems to keep up with fintechs.

They also see the opportunities that come with outsourcing certain tasks, he said.

“Historically, the banks have controlled a lot of the technology in house,” he said. “We’ve proven that we’re able to do this as a software-as-a-service offering in the cloud, to really offload some of the technical maintenance overhead.”