Synovus Financial, a $29 billion-assets regional bank based in Columbus, Ga., has hired Allen J. Gula, Jr. to be its chief operations officer. Gula started his new position yesterday.
Gula will be responsible for all operations and information technology for Synovus. In his 30 years in financial services, he has held executive positions in e-commerce, payment solutions, technology, operations and strategic business planning. He previously served as a senior executive at Greater Bay Bancorp in San Francisco and as co-president at Franklin Resources, a $750 billion global asset management company headquartered in San Mateo, Calif. Gula's career also includes his work as executive vice president at KeyCorp and chairman and CEO of Key Services.
In an interview this week, Gula told the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer, "I came here because I'm excited about the prospects and opportunities of expansion ... I was really brought in to help (Synovus Chief Executive Officer and President Kessel Stelling) with taking technology and operations to the next level and looking at the strategies and how we can grow the company. That's what really excited me."
Gula will report directly to Stelling, according to the paper. He has been given the mission of leveraging the company's technology to make it more efficient and scale its operations into a single, customer-friendly platform. Improvements could range from expanded branch and ATM capabilities to a single call center that provides better and faster service, he told the newspaper.
"Obviously, we've got to finish the job with getting out from under TARP and things like that," Gula said of the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, to which Synovus still owes $968 million. "But I think there's a real opportunity here, so now's the time to begin positioning the company so that we can scale it as we look at not only growing, but expanding product delivery and capabilities."
