The Most Powerful Women to Watch, No. 16, Liz Wolverton, Synovus

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A former CPA at Ernst & Young, Liz Wolverton ended up working in the banking industry by happenstance when moved closer to family in Georgia

She joined Columbus-based Synovus in 2003 as a CPA, and her first job was to implement Sarbanes-Oxley.

"It sounds like the worst job, but it probably changed the trajectory of my career," Wolverton recalled. "You have to understand the operations, the financials, and the business in order to construct the control environment…I met so many people and learned so many things."

Since then, Wolverton has expanded her responsibilities within the regional bank, which has over $57 billion in assets and $7.3 billion in capital. Today, she serves as an executive vice president at Synovus, and is the head of consumer banking and customer brand experience.

Over the past year, Wolverton – who guides the development and implementation of personal and small business banking products – has led a number of complex initiatives at the bank. For one, she helped lead the launch of Carefull, an AI-based fraud detection and prevention solution. Carefull was a fintech company that was part of a portfolio of fintechs Synovus invested in.

What initially drew Synovus to Carefull, according to Wolverton, is its potential "to protect and enable the older generations within today's current banking landscape." Beyond that demographic, the bank saw the value for any user in that it "really looked underneath transactions and behaviors…to interpret what's normal and what's not."

The integration of Carefull's technology has been a success, she said. Wolverton believes that incorporating the technology was one factor behind the bank's achievement of reducing fraud and operational losses by $3.2 million, or 20% year-over-year, in 2024. Overall, she said, Synovus worked hard to improve operational procedures, client education and online origination enhancements in an effort to reduce the occurrence of fraud.

Another monumental achievement in 2024 was the bank's ability to phase out free checking and still be able to retain greater than 90% of its balances. Wolverton believes the bank's ability to successfully convert nearly 200,000 accounts with $1 billion in deposits was due, in part, to overall increased customer satisfaction.

"Like many, we removed free checking from the menu, but we had to build value into our other products so that they were compelled to stay," she explained.

The efforts of Wolverton's team over the past year, which represents about one-third of Synovus and is 78% female, helped lead to the largest NPS (Net Promoter Score) increase among the top 50 banks, according to J.D. Power. (NPS is a measure used to gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction, and enthusiasm.)

For Wolverton, it's all in a day's work.

"I absolutely love what I do," she said. "Consumer banking is not a place for the weak of heart and spirit. It feels like a boomerang in terms of the regulatory environment. But I think that it has the ability to have such a high impact on our communities and our customers, " she said.