Early this year, UMB Financial Corporation closed on its $2 billion acquisition of Heartland Financial, the largest such deal in its 111-year-old history. The acquisition boosted Kansas City, Missouri-based UMB's assets by over 30%, to approximately $68 billion, and grew its presence from eight to 13 states.
Uma Wilson's role in managing product development, technology and operations at UMB Bank means she and her team have been in an "extremely heavy lifting" mode throughout the acquisition process, Wilson said.
"The initial review of all the different systems and different products and offerings from Heartland Financial Institution came out of my team," she explained.
Wilson said the review included customer experience mapping: "What are the different products that the bank we acquired offers to their clients? What products do we have that are comparable? Do we have to do any enhancements?"
And then there are the technical and relationship management aspects of moving Heartland's customers to UMB. Moving customers from one application to another seems like it should be an easy process, Wilson said, "but it's not. It comes with a tremendous amount of complexity."
Describing her team as "maniacal about our customer experience," Wilson noted that the process of coordinating all customer communication during the acquisition has come with the understanding that people often resist change.
The technical side of moving Heartland customers over includes working with service providers, merging data files, putting those files into the UMB systems, testing them, making sure the quality is there and then maintaining all of it.
Throughout, Wilson has ensured her team is motivated and engaged as they've sacrificed weekends and holidays to get things done. They have now completed phase one of the process, with another phase coming in October. "It went really well," Wilson said. "Now we do phase two, which means we've set the bar high."
Wilson has learned to set that bar high through nearly 20 years at UMB. She said the "three pillars" of her current position provide a unique vantage point from which she and her team can align with broad company strategy. "A lot of people … think that we just do IT and product and operations, but we are very much tuned into business," she says.
The team she oversees is the largest at UMB, with nearly 1,000 in the U.S. and 250 associates overseas; nine members report directly to her. Wilson oversees Enterprise Fraud Services at the bank, and they have recently added AI functions to help streamline internal processes. They are also testing AI as a means of combating payment fraud. Her team has completed a successful proof of concept for these tools. "Now we are commercializing that to make it a reality," she said.
Wilson stresses that she is thankful for her "amazing team" as well as UMB Bank president and CEO Jim Rine, whom she describes as her mentor.. "He guides me and also challenges me to be the best in what I do every day."
Outside of the bank, Wilson is part of Visa's Executive Forum and serves on The Bottom Line's Payment Strategic Advisory Council. She's also a member of the 10th Federal Reserve District's Advisory Group, which provides insights into finance and the broader economy.
