BB&T, SVP

Bank Technology News  |  November 2008

By Michael Sisk

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Regional banks the size of BB&T, at $137 billion, are not usually a font of innovation. They tend to be followers, watching what the larger banks vet and then adopting those technologies themselves. But SVP Tim Dillow is helping the North Carolina bank blaze its own trail. The trick, he says, for any deployment is to focus on improving a process, keep it simple and eliminate complexity. "That's where you get the real payback," he says.

Dillow is quick to point out that BB&T has a strong culture of innovation that is nurtured from the top down. There's the "Chairman's Innovation Award," he says, which chooses five innovative ideas from among the bank's 31,000 employees "to keep people focused on innovation" as an integrated part of just doing their jobs.

Dillow is, without question, a committed disciple in this cult of innovation. Earlier this year, Bank Technology News profiled Dillow's work with Conix Systems to solve check duplication, a problem that's worsened since the advent of Check 21. With physical checks, image replacement documents, ACH transactions and remote deposit capture all now occurring, there are many more check pathways into the bank, and so many more chances that some of those checks are duplicates.

The industry average for duplicate checks is 120 per million, and so BB&T's 3.5 million processed items per day meant it was potentially spending tens of thousands of dollars daily on duplicate check remediation - and thus had ample incentive to find a solution. It is just the kind of process that Dillow looks to improve using technology.

Dillow says the bank considered taking on the technology project itself, but quickly realized it needed a technology partner and struck an agreement with Conix. The result was Dupe Detective, which went live in August at BB&T, and which Conix is now starting to license at other banks. The industry has apparently caught on to BB&T's leadership role. Dillow says he's fielded half a dozen hour-long calls with other banks interested in adopting the solution. "I'm extremely proud of that," he says.

But Dillow is no one-trick pony. In addition to the check duplication initiative, he has two other projects in the works that together he expects will achieve returns on investment in two years and will save the institution tens of millions of dollars over the next five years. The first of these is to deploy branch capture technology at all bank branches, which has been accomplished at 334 branches in 11 states.

The second, which he describes as "really revolutionary" is proof optimization; this automates the proof area of central processing, replacing the manual encoding of checks with existing sorters and a powerful recognition engine. Previously, 250 to 300 proof operators would encode all checks prior to sorter capture. Now fewer operators are required to key only those checks and other documents it can't read. "It eliminates infrastructure and it's virtual," he says. "You take an every day problem, and without going overboard with technology you find a rational, reliable solution," he says.

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