Listen: How Sunrise Banks shifted its culture through automation
When COVID-19 hit, Sunrise Banks shifted to a remote environment within 48 hours and it quickly became clear that manual processes weren’t going to work anymore, said Sunrise CIO Brett Cooksey.
Cooksey came to the $1.2 billion Minneapolis, Minn.-based bank from C.H. Robinson, the supply chain management and logistics solution provider, which has a culture that is 80% to 90% digital, he said. At Sunrise, he faced a pre-pandemic culture that favored manual, paper-based processes over digitalization.
But a funny thing happened during COVID — the bank’s culture evolved from being devoutly manual to digital-friendly. Sunrise Banks’ automation of federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan applications has solidified that change. The bank stood up its own PPP solution to streamline the application process, which enabled its IT division to create digital data assets in the process, which they gave to the business. Once business employees began using that data, they also wanted to leverage more data during the second round of PPP.
“This round, they can’t stop asking for it,” Cooksey said. “Now it’s part of our conversations.”
That seamless adoption has led to a bigger budget and more employees for automation projects.
In this podcast, Cooksey details how his IT team shifted the company culture to embrace automation during the pandemic.
Bank Automation Ignite, taking place April 13-14, 2021 as a virtual experience, is the event for inspiring automation initiatives and investment in financial services. Formerly the Bank Innovation Ignite conference, this new focus creates an event where financial services professionals can discover new use cases and technologies that are accelerating automation in banking. Learn more and register for the event at www.BankAutomationIgnite.com.
The following is a transcript generated by AI technology that has been lightly edited but still contains errors.
Loraine Lawson
Culturally, there was a bit of a shift that people had to make How did you manage that? How did you – What helps?
Brett Cooksey
You think credibility as people see the value of the repeatability, the system being able to provide insight into what is happening, and then… unfortunately, with any development, there’s always things that go wrong or don’t work. And then at scale, so we’ve had a lot of bumps along the along the way, but absolute transparency has been the way to go. When something’s wrong, we’re there, we work with the business to fix it, and we own it. You know, my saying is mess up, fess up, and then move on. And just keep that everybody taking ownership, being transparent and understanding it’s a journey. And we had quite a bit of resistance in the early days this tall on her desk. She’s like, okay, here’s one lender can remember the name and she goes zoop here it is. Now do that. Here’s all the lenders information in one packet. And I can go to any page I want and look up any information. Do that in any technology today. And it was like, Okay, you got me. But unfortunately, thanks to the pandemic, and going remote. I mean, we went remote in 48 hours. we took and we didn’t even use teams, we just started, we were using teams in IT. This was in March. And I’ll see I was super progressive. And we shut we went remote before anybody that in our in our industry, a little community bank flipped it. And I mean, thank God for Microsoft and office. And we went in 48 hours, we took our companies about 270 300, we took probably 250 people remote in 48 hours, shifted them all home. And then I mean compliance, wait a minute, you can’t print to your home printer, because you need to MICR printer, you know, you’ve got I mean, MICR printers have special ink so you can validate that that check is actually printed by financial institution versus somebody running a little laser printer at home. And we’ve got a Fed line that goes into our main building, so nobody’s gonna take a Fedline and run it to the home. So we had to do that balancing act of what are these essential staff that need to be local, and then when needs to be at home, but people work from home started to just get used to everything’s digital, everything’s virtual. Our invoicing processing, used to be 100% paper based and get a stack of invoices, go through each one hook (look) it up in my budget, and then write it down and stamp it. We went virtual, so then we adjusted our policies. And this is the the challenge with with regulation, you have to have you have to state the policy. And then you have to provide evidence that you’re you’re following it. And then the auditors would come and take a look and see if you’re doing what you said you’re going to do. And so we had to adjust those and then get everybody remote and then accept, accept emails as an approval for expense. And then then DocuSign came along. And I mean, we were a DocuSign user, but just fringe just the basics. Well PPP we ingested from, from from Anvil, we automated all the all the checks and balances and process in stages for a loan, you know from from a lender to credit due diligence to background checks to, etc, etc. And then we had to send these documents. And we started and because that was a touch point for our loan processing team, they were using DocuSign. But they were just using it to package because we had some some templates, we’d send it out to the user or to the borrower, and then get it back, and then we print it out. And then we’d scan it, so that the mainframe system would suck it into our documentation repository. And so once we say you don’t have to print, you don’t have to scan, we’re going to take this DocuSign template and connected to our internal technology we just built. And when it comes back, you’re going to get a ping, to say, Oh, this, this borrower just signed this document. And you’re going to click on the notification. And it’s going to show you the actual document. And every data point that that borrower has completed, is also digitally captured, captured. So when you say disperse funds, you actually push a button, and we create the ACH transaction, and then money goes to that borrower.And as first couple of cycles was like, everybody’s terrified, scary. Now we ran, I think we’re upwards of 600- 700 that have gone through that process without a hitch. And now the question from the businesses, wait a minute, do we can we go digital signature, can we kill wet signatures because to get people to branches to sign documents today? Absolutely. But that’s the first generation that’s convert our docs to DocuSign templates. But then we need to take it to the next step, where we label those template fields with this information being entered. And on the on the rebound from the borrower or from the party that’s entering information, then it becomes a digital asset. And we can pull it into our data, data structures, and start to provide you proactive information on it. So people are not processing paper and chasing emails down. They’re starting to be better informed and start to focus on knowledge work. versus this just redundant. pounding, pounding out paperwork. Right, exactly. So we’re seeing that cultural shift, to really upscaling everybody to really go into that digital world. And then that helps to scale. Because you’re not spending so much time and paper and then scanning and printing because, well, there’s no scanner at home. And it has to be a secure scanner, and a secure printer, which is all internal. So we have to go digital so that drove this this, I would say accelerated almost quanta cultural shift. Without that, in my career, it’s it’s always been difficult.Loraine Lawson
So did you get a bigger budget this year for that? I mean, since they’ve shifted is a shift in your budget?Brett Cooksey
Yes, yes. For this ACH origination. I was able to get a team like a SWAT team of about five or six resources to really attack, ACH origination because that’s, that’s the highest volume, highest potential highest risk of fraud. And just a lot of manual, because that volume, we had so many checks and balances in it, to make sure because it’s such a high risk maneuver that you just got to throw bodies at it to make it scale. Now we’re looking at how do we digitize it. And it’s kind of fascinating. The, one of the main platforms that we interface with, it’s an API platform, but we’re using Excel spreadsheets and uploading them. Because we haven’t got we didn’t have the technology and the previous leadership, technology leadership. Their their strategy was outsource everything, like vendors, vendors, SAAS, I mean, you can see the value in the SAAS play because you’re getting the latest version of software all the time. And, you know, you’re not responsible when your deliverable is late, because that’s the vendor that you’re fighting with. The problem is, you’re stuck with that vendors understanding of your digital IP. And if you build it yourself downside is you’ve got to maintain it and then eventually kill it off. Right. The beauty of building it yourself is you can have your technology directly mimic your IP or your business process versus trying to shoehorn and train And little workarounds and customizations and paying for that anyway. And you have the responsiveness of being able to quickly make change real time with your business and get that feedback feedback loop working. So with PPP, for instance, I mean, this is the first time I’ve ever worked I’ve ever built software with the requirements are evolving real time. So the policies from from the SBA is nuts. I mean, they’ll say, Okay, great. One that just came out now, is we were 20,000 per employee, there was a cap on that, based on the calculation. And so a whole bunch of them failed. And then, okay, we’ve seen too many failures, we’ve just moved it to 35. And because we own the pipeline, we could make the adjustment for any new apps coming in, we change the validation, and that worked. And, and then internally, we had to retrofit that to reevaluate all applications and quickly fix them. Do that with a vendor, and you’re standing in line. So I spoke to a number of peers across the country and other small banks, working with vendors to build the technology, the outsource, from my previous leadership here at the bank, and they’re in line, ‘Oh we’ll get back to you, there’s going to be a release, and then you have to taste it. And then we’ll roll it out to production. And then you good to go.’ well, the SBA platform, I mean, the SBA program is evolving so quickly, that we’re actually one of the very few that were on the bridge line that they opened up. Because they’ve created a new API platform. And they were testing it, and I was on there every day. And we’d find issues. And we see that they’re in the announcement the next day from SBA, oh we’ve made this change. And we were CDFIs. So we’ve got access to PPP lines around to ? 10 days before the big banks. And because we have our own digital assets and developers, and now the business is going holy crap. They’re talking to their peers, and everybody’s slow rolling. And we’re so far ahead. So you can start to see the flywheel of evidence, like you said, how do you how do you shift that culture? I think its transparency. Its evidence, its credibility. And just being open and willing to to learn and get in the trenches and learn alongside with the business.
Culturally, there was a bit of a shift that people had to make How did you manage that? How did you – What helps?
Brett Cooksey
You think credibility as people see the value of the repeatability, the system being able to provide insight into what is happening, and then… unfortunately, with any development, there’s always things that go wrong or don’t work. And then at scale, so we’ve had a lot of bumps along the along the way, but absolute transparency has been the way to go. When something’s wrong, we’re there, we work with the business to fix it, and we own it. You know, my saying is mess up, fess up, and then move on. And just keep that everybody taking ownership, being transparent and understanding it’s a journey. And we had quite a bit of resistance in the early days this tall on her desk. She’s like, okay, here’s one lender can remember the name and she goes zoop here it is. Now do that. Here’s all the lenders information in one packet. And I can go to any page I want and look up any information. Do that in any technology today. And it was like, Okay, you got me. But unfortunately, thanks to the pandemic, and going remote. I mean, we went remote in 48 hours. we took and we didn’t even use teams, we just started, we were using teams in IT. This was in March. And I’ll see I was super progressive. And we shut we went remote before anybody that in our in our industry, a little community bank flipped it. And I mean, thank God for Microsoft and office. And we went in 48 hours, we took our companies about 270 300, we took probably 250 people remote in 48 hours, shifted them all home. And then I mean compliance, wait a minute, you can’t print to your home printer, because you need to MICR printer, you know, you’ve got I mean, MICR printers have special ink so you can validate that that check is actually printed by financial institution versus somebody running a little laser printer at home. And we’ve got a Fed line that goes into our main building, so nobody’s gonna take a Fedline and run it to the home. So we had to do that balancing act of what are these essential staff that need to be local, and then when needs to be at home, but people work from home started to just get used to everything’s digital, everything’s virtual. Our invoicing processing, used to be 100% paper based and get a stack of invoices, go through each one hook (look) it up in my budget, and then write it down and stamp it. We went virtual, so then we adjusted our policies. And this is the the challenge with with regulation, you have to have you have to state the policy. And then you have to provide evidence that you’re you’re following it. And then the auditors would come and take a look and see if you’re doing what you said you’re going to do. And so we had to adjust those and then get everybody remote and then accept, accept emails as an approval for expense. And then then DocuSign came along. And I mean, we were a DocuSign user, but just fringe just the basics. Well PPP we ingested from, from from Anvil, we automated all the all the checks and balances and process in stages for a loan, you know from from a lender to credit due diligence to background checks to, etc, etc. And then we had to send these documents. And we started and because that was a touch point for our loan processing team, they were using DocuSign. But they were just using it to package because we had some some templates, we’d send it out to the user or to the borrower, and then get it back, and then we print it out. And then we’d scan it, so that the mainframe system would suck it into our documentation repository. And so once we say you don’t have to print, you don’t have to scan, we’re going to take this DocuSign template and connected to our internal technology we just built. And when it comes back, you’re going to get a ping, to say, Oh, this, this borrower just signed this document. And you’re going to click on the notification. And it’s going to show you the actual document. And every data point that that borrower has completed, is also digitally captured, captured. So when you say disperse funds, you actually push a button, and we create the ACH transaction, and then money goes to that borrower.And as first couple of cycles was like, everybody’s terrified, scary. Now we ran, I think we’re upwards of 600- 700 that have gone through that process without a hitch. And now the question from the businesses, wait a minute, do we can we go digital signature, can we kill wet signatures because to get people to branches to sign documents today? Absolutely. But that’s the first generation that’s convert our docs to DocuSign templates. But then we need to take it to the next step, where we label those template fields with this information being entered. And on the on the rebound from the borrower or from the party that’s entering information, then it becomes a digital asset. And we can pull it into our data, data structures, and start to provide you proactive information on it. So people are not processing paper and chasing emails down. They’re starting to be better informed and start to focus on knowledge work. versus this just redundant. pounding, pounding out paperwork. Right, exactly. So we’re seeing that cultural shift, to really upscaling everybody to really go into that digital world. And then that helps to scale. Because you’re not spending so much time and paper and then scanning and printing because, well, there’s no scanner at home. And it has to be a secure scanner, and a secure printer, which is all internal. So we have to go digital so that drove this this, I would say accelerated almost quanta cultural shift. Without that, in my career, it’s it’s always been difficult.Loraine Lawson
So did you get a bigger budget this year for that? I mean, since they’ve shifted is a shift in your budget?Brett Cooksey
Yes, yes. For this ACH origination. I was able to get a team like a SWAT team of about five or six resources to really attack, ACH origination because that’s, that’s the highest volume, highest potential highest risk of fraud. And just a lot of manual, because that volume, we had so many checks and balances in it, to make sure because it’s such a high risk maneuver that you just got to throw bodies at it to make it scale. Now we’re looking at how do we digitize it. And it’s kind of fascinating. The, one of the main platforms that we interface with, it’s an API platform, but we’re using Excel spreadsheets and uploading them. Because we haven’t got we didn’t have the technology and the previous leadership, technology leadership. Their their strategy was outsource everything, like vendors, vendors, SAAS, I mean, you can see the value in the SAAS play because you’re getting the latest version of software all the time. And, you know, you’re not responsible when your deliverable is late, because that’s the vendor that you’re fighting with. The problem is, you’re stuck with that vendors understanding of your digital IP. And if you build it yourself downside is you’ve got to maintain it and then eventually kill it off. Right. The beauty of building it yourself is you can have your technology directly mimic your IP or your business process versus trying to shoehorn and train And little workarounds and customizations and paying for that anyway. And you have the responsiveness of being able to quickly make change real time with your business and get that feedback feedback loop working. So with PPP, for instance, I mean, this is the first time I’ve ever worked I’ve ever built software with the requirements are evolving real time. So the policies from from the SBA is nuts. I mean, they’ll say, Okay, great. One that just came out now, is we were 20,000 per employee, there was a cap on that, based on the calculation. And so a whole bunch of them failed. And then, okay, we’ve seen too many failures, we’ve just moved it to 35. And because we own the pipeline, we could make the adjustment for any new apps coming in, we change the validation, and that worked. And, and then internally, we had to retrofit that to reevaluate all applications and quickly fix them. Do that with a vendor, and you’re standing in line. So I spoke to a number of peers across the country and other small banks, working with vendors to build the technology, the outsource, from my previous leadership here at the bank, and they’re in line, ‘Oh we’ll get back to you, there’s going to be a release, and then you have to taste it. And then we’ll roll it out to production. And then you good to go.’ well, the SBA platform, I mean, the SBA program is evolving so quickly, that we’re actually one of the very few that were on the bridge line that they opened up. Because they’ve created a new API platform. And they were testing it, and I was on there every day. And we’d find issues. And we see that they’re in the announcement the next day from SBA, oh we’ve made this change. And we were CDFIs. So we’ve got access to PPP lines around to ? 10 days before the big banks. And because we have our own digital assets and developers, and now the business is going holy crap. They’re talking to their peers, and everybody’s slow rolling. And we’re so far ahead. So you can start to see the flywheel of evidence, like you said, how do you how do you shift that culture? I think its transparency. Its evidence, its credibility. And just being open and willing to to learn and get in the trenches and learn alongside with the business.
