Wealth Access Report FINAL - Flipbook - Page 10
THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS STRATEGY
By: Kiah Lau Haslett
Executives from community financial institutions share how they
started their data initiatives and addressed the challenges they
encountered.
Before he joined the credit union space,
Dennis Klemenz worked for a decade in helicopter
aviation. When he joined Jovia Financial Federal
Credit Union as its chief technology officer in the
spring of 2023, the now-$4.5 billion credit union
had started building out a data warehouse that
came with its new core banking platform.
Creating that data warehouse — which stores processed,
transformed and structured data that’s ready to be used in
a model or report — was “pretty much” the data management strategy at the time, he says. While this was a major
undertaking, his goal was to take the project a step further
and develop a way for the Westbury, New York credit union
to leverage its data — not just store it.
But that turned out to be easier said than done. Klemenz
found that creating a data warehouse for a company that
builds military helicopters — what he did in his prior
career — was simpler than completing the same project
for a community financial institution. The aviation data was
tighter and the redundancy of different systems meant that
the information effectively came from a single source, creating a more controlled data environment. In contrast, data
analysis into its business and uses it to inform decisions and
better serve customers. These initiatives should spur creativity
and challenge how employees think about and solve problems.
However, these projects projects inevitably encounter challenges, as Klemenz found, which means they require the
commitment of time and resources from the institution’s
board and management team to push them forward.
This commitment was essential at Sonata Bank, a unit
of Sonata Financial Holdings, in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Management decided early on they wanted to own the institution’s data and processes so they didn’t have to rely on
a vendor, which meant prioritizing the necessary resources.
Integrating fragmented systems can be cumbersome for
small institutions, and the initial work to start these projects
can be expensive.
“Making it a strategic priority at the board level — that
data was going to be part of our DNA and was going to be
how we operated — was really critical,” says Will Rhoads,
chief innovation officer at the $222 million bank. “Being
strategic about what [aspects] the bank owns and understands is one of the most important decisions it can make.
To me, if data is not one of those, you’re missing the boat.”
extracted from a system at a financial institution needs to
be reconciled to the general ledger, complicating the efforts
Sonata set up an advisory technology committee that includ-
to build a data warehouse.
ed directors, executive management and outside advisers.
That committee educated the board about the work and
“Ironically, in a company where we defied the laws of nature
and gravity, it was easier to [configure a data environment]
than it is in financial services,” Klemenz says, comparing the
two different industries.
Truly successful initiatives should help an institution think
about itself differently, and a data strategy is no different.
resources the bank would need for a project. But the committee also helped build momentum, “galvanizing the entire
board and senior management on why this is so important
and why it’s so critical to who we want to be,” Rhoads says.
For some banks and credit unions, a successful data management project will also require a cultural and mindset shift.
The goal for many institutions is to become a data-driven
enterprise. That means the bank or credit union has integrated
8 | FINXTECH INTELLIGENCE REPORT
“I don’t think culture is one of those things that you can
