If there is one way to describe Umpqua Bank’s innovation plans it would be “human digital,” according to the bank’s new CEO, Cort O’Haver.

Human digital, as O’Haver explained, is the marriage of digital innovation with the physical retail banking experience. (Oddly enough, Chris Skinner’s new book is called Digital Human.) O’Haver is not talking about robots in branches, but rather a “way to merge the two aspects, where it’s either something that comes from customer demand or it’s a solution to a customer problem.”

O’Haver has been CEO of Portland, Ore.-based Umpqua since January 2017, replacing longtime CEO Ray Davis, who had served in that position for about 23 years.

“It’s true, not just for this bank but the whole industry, that the physical delivery is not as relevant to the customer as it was a few years ago,” O’Haver told Bank Innovation. “The big question was how are we going to take our experience, which 20 years ago was very relevant, and change that to be relevant today?”

To do that, O’Haver hired “new people with different perspectives,” he said. O’Haver just hired Umpqua’s head innovation officer just a few days before his interview with Bank Innovation.

The hire is so new that O’Haver could not disclose the person’s name, except for referring to this executive as “her.”

Another new hire was Shawn Ahmed, who is currently leading Umpqua’s accelerator/innovation arm Pivotus. Based in Silicon Valley -Pivotus was set up by Davis in 2015 to promote innovation.

“We didn’t see anything innovative that either fintechs or banks were doing that was focused on specific solutions, so we formed Pivotus,” O’haver said. “The prior CEO was very bright and creative, but I needed to transition to an operator.”

Enter Ahmed as that operator. In April, he took on the role of president and CEO of Pivotus. He was previously senior director at ML-focused data analytics platform provider Splunk. As CEO of Pivotus, Ahmed reports to the Umpqua Board of Directors. Pivotus is a fully owned Umpqua Bank subsidiary.

“We are a software company,” Ahmed told Bank Innovation. “A platform model and building the system as a SaaS enterprise is crucial to getting the right transformation playbook in place.”

And transformation is certainly the best way to describe Umpqua’s mandate to Pivotus. The bank works with Pivotus on various innovation projects that the bank can then incorporate into its own digital plans.

In fact, right now O’Haver and Ahmed are in the process of testing a new mobile app. This app, whose name is undisclosed, is like a dating app but instead it links customers to a bank specialist based on location. The customer and the specialist will be able to chat through the app and even set up in-person appointments. The differentiation, O’Haver explained, is that it is a person and not a chatbot. The customer chooses a specialist and is connected to the same specialist every time. On the advisor’s side, the software will helps the specialist manage and scale all these relationships. The app is more about establishing a relationship between the customer and banker rather than just setting appointments, he explained.

Neither O’Haver nor Ahmed could disclose more details until the official launch, which is set to take place sometime this year.

O’Haver’s vision is to create a retail experience that is equal parts digital as it is physical.

“Umpqua had been around for 65 years. It was set up by a bunch of lumbermen to serve a specific community. Our transformation began 27 years ago. Through innovation and a solid growth plan, the then-CEO managed to grow the bank from $150 million in assets to $27 billion. The reputation of the bank is built around our retail experience, and that’s what I want to continue to build on, both in digital or physical ways.”