CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Truist has completed the brunt of its technology integration work and, despite a digital-first strategy, has chosen to retain the two treasury systems from BB&T and SunTrust, the banks that merged Truist.

Bryce Elliott, Truist’s chief information officer for wholesale and enterprise payments, said at the Bank Automation Summit 2022 today that the decision to leave the systems in place — which some attendees considered an apparent symptom of the size of the integration — was based on expediency.

“What we realized was that neither one was good enough for Truist,” Elliott said. “But we’re building a new one.”

SunTrust and BB&T agreed to merge in late 2019 to create the $530 billion Charlotte-based Truist.

Treasury platforms help large corporate clients of the bank to manage their capital. Elliott said that he expects Truist to create a new treasury platform — seemingly called Truist One View — within two or three years.

The situation with the treasury platforms “is an example of where we’ve we said, ‘Neither one’s right, the best thing for our clients long-term, as the sixth- or seventh-largest bank,’ so we’re going to run them both while we build something,” Elliott said.

Some executives at other banks pointed out that Truist will likely incur significant costs by continuing to run both platforms.

Truist finalized at an Atlanta technology center on Feb. 21 its massive technology migration, with the transition of SunTrust customers to the Truist technology platform. Elliott said there were challenges, not uncommon for a migration of the scope executed by Truist.

“Did we have some bumps? Sure,” Elliot said. “We migrated some capabilities on to a new platform and we had to redesign an entire onboarding solution within about eight hours on Saturday night.”

Regardless, Elliott touted the migration as a success.

“It was it was hard, it was intense,” he said, “but, you know, for our clients, we made the best decisions. Our purpose is to inspire and build better lives and communities.”