CHARLOTTE, N.C. — TIAA Bank plans to expand its use of unstructured data to improve complaints management.

Use of unstructured data will provide the bank with better insights into potential trends, John Elton, chief information officer of $40 billion TIAA Bank, said at the Bank Automation Summit. During the fireside chat, Bank Automation News Publisher JJ Hornblass asked Elton about potential use cases for unstructured data.

“The one that comes to mind that I think we started doing — but I want to expand much more dramatically — is around complaints management,” Elton said.

Complaints tend to be in unstructured data forms such as voice, surveys or web feedback forms, he said, noting that these insights could help the bank in its interactions with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“How can you efficiently kind of pull that data to look at any trends to those complaints that are going on?” Elton said. “So that’s an area I’d like to expand our use of unstructured data and analysis there much, much more than we have so far.”

‘Wrapping’ legacy systems for differentiation

TIAA’s strategy for customizing core and other legacy solutions is to put a “wrapper” of the bank’s own tech around it, Elton said when asked which system the bank uses for digital commercial account opening.

“We’re on an FIS platform for our account opening there,” he said. “We also wrap a lot of the vendor technology with often our own technology that we build internally. So I think there’s … this balance between … where can you use a third party for something that’s kind of the generic type of process, and then put our own spin or our own emphasis on it, based on what we see our primary customer needs.”

The challenge isn’t so much the core system, but the broader ecosystem, Elton said.

“What I’ll tell you is a lot of the core technologies are fairly generic, right? I mean, if you think about it, a lot of it comes down to basic recordkeeping,” he said. “From that perspective, you can use a lot of different kind of cores or recordkeepers that are out there, and it’s that broad technology around that really kind of adds that differentiation.”

The Jacksonville, Fla. -based TIAA uses this wrapper strategy “fairly pervasively,” Elton added. Often, it involves custom code, but the IT division also uses third-party wrapper for customization, which he said will become easier with the growth of fintech solutions.

“Historically, we’ve been more of a build-our-own when it comes to the wrapper technology,” he said. “More and more we’re starting to see the availability of products, and that’s opening up other opportunities … and certainly, we’re doing a lot more exploration there than we had in the past.”

In part due to acquisition, TIAA uses four or five different segments in its business, each using a different core, Elton said, noting that if he had to do it over again, he would consolidate some of the cores.

“For any financial institution that’s been in business for a while, or technology, you build up a fair amount of legacy type of technologies,” he said. “There’s a little bit of a dual-edged sword that exists, because it’s making sure that as you’re building wrappers,” rather than “adding baggage,” he said.