As the $26 billion Arvest Bank looks to modernize its technology stack and move to the cloud, APIs will be key. Chief Product and Strategy Officer Richard Pulliam, an API veteran, was hired earlier this month by the Fayetteville, Ark.-based bank to help revamp its legacy systems.

Pulliam has been working with APIs going back to the advent of the iPhone in 2007, he told Bank Automation News. That includes serving as VP of product management at employee payroll and benefits administrator TriNet, VP of developer products and API management at mainframe software provider CA Technologies, and VP of apps enablement at Finnish telecommunications firm Nokia.

At Arvest Bank, Pulliam will support digital growth initiatives for both retail and commercial customers as the regional bank looks to beat the big banks at customer experience, he said. He sat down with BAN to discuss Arvest’s automation journey and tech modernization projects. What follows is an edited version of the conversation.

Bank Automation News: What are some of the latest technology- and automation-related projects at Arvest Bank?

Richard Pulliam: Arvest is in the midst of a transformation initiative where it’s revisiting its technology stack, top to bottom. But whether you’re talking about cloud technology, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning or whatever, if you can’t draw a direct line between the technology that you’re enabling and the value it creates for the customer on the other end, it’s not inherently valuable.

So, what are we doing that can empower and scale to meet the customer’s need? That may be front-office capabilities, personalizing financial products, our mobile channel, web capabilities, the back office, or automating things like [fraud] protection, anti-money laundering [AML], know your customer [KYC], and document management.

If we’re automating a back-end process, it’s serving the customer’s need — like if we’re able to score your risk on a loan and get the documentation that’s needed in the origination process.

BAN: What promising innovative technology is on your radar screen?

Pulliam: We’ve got our eyes on AI and machine learning. This is not new technology, but it is in terms of how it’s being deployed. If you think about AML and KYC technology, understanding who your users are protects the bank, the services and the user data.

We’re seeing a lot of compelling use cases with AI and machine learning within the banking infrastructure and with things like compliance. Think about the need to provide a banking service within community ecosystems and maybe outside of your branch, such as in various digital channels. You’ve got to be able to scale your compliance, and the only way that’s going to happen is with machine learning and AI around that.

Blockchain is also really interesting for things like smart contracts. We’ve got our eye on it, but I think it’s an evolving technology.

BAN: What technology projects will Arvest focus on?

Pulliam: Fundamentally, it starts with the API stack, because that’s the part that plugs everything in. We’re modernizing our APIs, thinking about all the things that a bank does and can do, so we can inherently build flexibility into our future.

We’re doing a lot of work on our foundation, heavily modernizing our data platform and entering into a core modernization as well. We are moving to the cloud and modernizing. Call center modernization is something else where we’re pushing hard.

BAN: What’s key to the digital and open banking services of today and tomorrow?

Pulliam: I’ve been in the API space for 15 years, and we’ve been pushing financial services organizations and others to embrace standardization. I’m a big believer in standardization and what open banking represents.

Open banking is not a set of association standards that we’re all supposed to sit on our hands and wait for guidance on writing. Financial institutions have to be active and play a role in the definition of how we’re going to work together to make better experiences for customers.

If a customer wants to generate a loan and self-service, how does that get embedded? How does that get facilitated to the customer in a way that is compliant, secure and works well?

The quicker that every organization embraces the need to break the monolithic tech stacks that every industry has some version of, the quicker that they’ll embrace that openness, and that’s a much more powerful experience.

BAN: What is something people might be surprised to know about you?

Pulliam: I’m an amateur woodworker. I think it’s a product of using too much software, things that you can’t put your hands on. About 10 years ago, I picked up some bleachers they were giving away from California Memorial Stadium and made a table out of them. I like to build things, and I’m a builder at heart.

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