By the Numbers: The Metrics That Make You—and Your Company & Closing Remarks

In a series of inspiring Lightning Talks, hear from top banking and fintech executives as they present the business metric they're most proud of this year and how that benchmark affects the health of their companies. These quick talks will motivate you to think differently about your own metrics. Plus, each presentation will be followed by a tight Q&A to dig deeper. Join this session to come away with actionable strategies for growing marks in your own business.

Introductions by Bailey Reutzel, Senior Director, Strategy and Content, American Banker Live Media

Transcription: 
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.

Liz Wolverton (00:08):
Look at the remaining group. Y'all made it all the way to the end and you're going to make it to the last session. First of all, I did want to take the opportunity while I'm up here to thank American Banker for what a great platform this is. And I hope you all have had a really good time over the past couple of days. I have had the privilege to participate in these conferences for about a decade now. And I was telling Shauna earlier that I remember the first time I heard Barbara Byrne speak and it reminded me of Christina who spoke earlier and she's just a badass. I mean, that's just awesome to see people who've been in the industry this long and what a great platform they've created. So I had to take the opportunity to thank that group. But today I am excited to be here right before cocktails for you all and excited that I get to talk about something I'm really proud about.

(00:59):
And that is what the team has done. And I say that because everything I talk about today is not because of me, but because of the team that we have at Synovus around our free checking conversion. And really, this is about optimizing inevitable change. Many of you have experienced some of the changes that I'm talking about, but hopefully what you'll see in terms of why I believe that we have had such great success is really repeatable, whether it's a free checking conversion or any other big initiative. So let's talk about the backdrop of this going all the way back to 2022 and the trigger of regulatory changes and what was happening back in 2022. You all know we had probably one of the biggest mobilizations of changes in terms of CFPB, CFPB's thoughts on fees and just really tightening the noose around banks.

(01:58):
And so we had to address that. We decided to move away from certain fees and that really changed. These were fees for service that we were providing, but at the end of the day, when there's a lack of a regulatory appetite around it, you really need to address it. So we moved away from certain fees and that resulted in an unfair value exchange for certain products and we had to evaluate our product lineup. So we did that and free checking became really unbalanced. And so that led to the revision of our product lineup. And the first thing we had to do when we got rid of free checking was really get teams past the place of no. Really get the people on board. There were three primary success factors that I would say. One is success largely lies in the hands of the people that deliver.

(02:52):
And I know that you being part of a team or being a leader probably know that. The second is focusing on the opportunity optimizes the outcome every single time. Don't focus on the negative, focus on the opportunity. And that's what we've done. And the third is intentional for us. Intentional, yet very agile execution supports strong results. So those are the three things I want you to keep in mind as we breeze through. This is supposed to be a fast take on this metric that you live or die by your people. Number two, like I said, is focusing on opportunity. And number three, intentional yet agile execution delivers strong results. So we had to get our team past the place of no. We had 185,000 accounts that were converting and $1 billion worth of deposits. That's a huge burden.

(03:51):
So you really have to get your army behind you. And moving people past the place of no starts with a why, not just telling people that we're going to change the accounts, but explaining the why, talking about the regulatory changes, taking time to sit down with teams and helping them understand the exchange of the value proposition. When you are impacting clients in a negative way, I know our teams and probably your teams as well, really have a resistance to it. They believe in relationships. They believe in the noble cause that they're doing. And so when you are impacting what they believe, having a negative perception on their customer base, you've really got to help them understand why we're doing it. We went to every region across our bank network and sat with leaders and gave them the time, not only to talk about the why, but for them to ask questions as well, for them to dig deeper.

(04:45):
That was a really important turning point for us with people opening up their ears to talk about what was next. Then what we did was we created a platform that they could buy into. I could not just give them something on the lid of a trash can. We had to create an account that had incremental value. So we did just that. We showed them, A, that there's a place for everyone still within our product lineup. Two, we brought into our product lineup value creation through additional features and functionality that gave them something to put their voice behind so they could focus on the opportunity with the clients instead of just focusing on the fact that free checking was going away or that there was a fee.

(05:34):
And that gave them... And then the third thing we did was we gave them time to adjust. We had a very careful sequence of how we converted free checking. The first thing that we did was we sunset the product. So we sunset the product and began selling and getting their muscle around the new product lineup before we even thought about conversion. And then we were agile. We kind of read the room. We were doing this right when the little mini bank crisis came along in 2023 and we decided we're going to pause the conversion. We're not ready to convert yet. The environment right now has changed. It's a very sensitive environment. Our team has just started building muscle around selling this product. We're going to wait for the conversion. We actually postponed the conversion nine months. Once we got past what we felt was a very sensitive period, we felt like the team had built muscle, got a little more strength behind the new product and a little more voice and confidence.

(06:31):
We knew that then we could move to conversion, but we converted in waves. The first conversion that we did, our new product and our product lineup, if you have a certain relationship with us, then you have the ability to waive fees similar to what many of you have. So the first group that we converted was one that was highly unlikely to have a fee associated with it. We did outreach programs to these individuals and it was always good news. Here's the good news: we're moving to a new product lineup that's not free, but what it does is it's very rich in benefits. And by the way, the impact to you should be none because with your relationship with us, you qualify for that account and for all those new and added benefits. It allowed them to have a very good experience with a set of clients and that good exchange with clients in terms of their reaction.

(07:23):
Then we moved to the conversion of individuals who would not qualify immediately for a fee. Obviously those were harder conversations, but our teams were much more prepared. So creating that platform for our teams, helping them understand the why, and then giving them time to adapt. Those were all key components of helping those people who are at the center of success be really successful. The second thing is we focused on the opportunity. You can take something like an account conversion and say, "This is simply an operational exercise. We've just got to get past it and get it done." But we didn't do that. We knew that what this did was provide us the opportunity to reach out to clients, maybe those that we haven't touched in a while. And you can think a client is safe because you're making a good change, but anytime you change something, change makes people uncomfortable.

(08:15):
So we took this opportunity, like I said, to reach out to clients and to reconnect. We got so many stories back from our teams about how this reconnection led to incremental opportunities. So focusing on that opportunity instead of starting with, "Hey, here's a negative change that's going to happen, but here's a positive thing that we're going to be delivering to you" was a big reason for our success. And then third, what I would say is the intentional yet agile delivery. Be ready, be planned. But like I said, read the room. You can't force fit something if the timing is not right. And that's exactly what we did. I mentioned that we paused conversion. We waited over nine months to convert after the environment change, and we structured it in those waves that helped us be successful. We had the outreach plan, and then ultimately along the way, it gets back to the people consistently.

(09:13):
We paused, we stopped. We said, "What are you hearing?" We made three adjustments to the product along the way. We were willing to understand that we went into this, which is a big change, not knowing the perfect answers. You can't wait for perfection. You have to be willing to adapt. So we made product adjustments, we made timing adjustments, but all along what we did was we stayed connected to our teams. So those were the three: enabling the people, focusing on the opportunity and being willing to be planned, but also to be agile were all key to our success. And I'm happy to say that of those $1 billion, we still have 90% of those balances. And even for the high risk customers, we divided our group into low risk and high risk customers. We have been able to retain 70% of those high risk customers.

(10:03):
So I attribute that great success to our team and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Audience Member 1 (10:18):
Oh, that seems a big hurdle is getting people on board with what you want to do when they maybe really don't want to.

Liz Wolverton (10:29):
Yeah. Well, first of all, you start with a place that I believe the change was really aligned to who we are as a bank, but also it was aligned to the fact that the economics had changed. And so if you're starting from a place of a firm foundation that the change is the right change to make, that's the first thing. The second thing is, then you have to get people to that same place of understanding. You put yourself in their shoes and here's what they hear: You're taking away a product that's probably the easiest product for me to sell, first of all. It's free. That's a pretty easy advertising campaign. The second thing is they're not so sure even though we have a company that has a great culture, great trust, there's always something skeptical about what are you trying to pull on the client. So unpacking the economics and marrying that to, yes, we have a strong value proposition.

(11:23):
Yes, we want to bring value, but the third thing that I would say we did for them is we reminded them: you're a pretty big deal. You're number one in client service. You're number one in trust. You are worth paying for a bank account. So reiterating the whys and then reinforcing the value that they provided, I think helped get them to the other side.

(11:54):
I'm so impressed y'all have questions at 3:15. Thank you so much. Yeah. From start to finish, how long did your change management plan take to build and execute for this? That's a great question. We actually identified the need to make a change back in 2022. At that time, we were very focused on making sure that not only could we deliver a good product lineup that made sense for our customers and for us, but that we would be able to mobilize it. So I would say it was back in 2022 that we started thinking through what does change management look like because we knew based on our model, if our people weren't behind it, this was not going to be a success for us. We were going to have a lot of issues. So I would say at that time, back in 2022, we did.

(12:52):
And to this day, I think that our head of our network who is here today, Susan Pitts, she would say we're probably still doing this. We're still doing a lot of continuing to reinforce and celebrating success stories because I think those success stories help people buy into the change as well. So a long time. That is the key here. That change management is so much a big part of the process, so undervalued many times, but such a big part of the process. Sure.

Audience Member 2 (13:27):
Thank you, Liz. Alex. So the 90% retention is absolutely remarkable. You mentioned not waiting for perfection and having to make adjustments after the launch. Reflecting on those adjustments, what would you have changed at the beginning?

Liz Wolverton (13:45):
Yeah, I'm a person of very few regrets. I feel like you've got to move and then you have to... So I don't know that I would have adjusted much at the beginning. One of the things we did was adjust the threshold. I felt like we had reached the waiver threshold. I felt like we had reached the right balance in terms of exchange of value, but I heard some very situational things from our teams that said, "Can we give a little on that?" And quite frankly, I felt like, "Yeah, we can give a little and we won't give away the house." Did I feel like it had gotten a little unbalanced?

(14:22):
Yeah, but I'd rather it be a little unbalanced and continue to have momentum than risk some of the attrition. So I would say I have very few regrets in terms of we were just responsive and I would say I'm more pleased at the level of communication responsiveness that we had. Well, applause to you all for hanging in. I wish I had free drinks for everybody, but I don't.

Anna Chung (14:57):
Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for sticking around. I'm so glad you're still here. My name is Anna Chung with Hanmi Bank. I'm the chief community lending officer for Hanmi Bank in Los Angeles. I just wanted to start by talking a little bit about our bank and our program, as well as our team. Hanmi opened its doors in 1982 to basically provide loans to small businesses and local community who are mostly immigrant ethnic customers. Now, after 43 years, we have 32 branches in multiple states, nine loan production offices, and we're at $7.9 billion in assets. We also believe that a community bank is to provide access to capital to local businesses, which then can help strengthen the local economy. I feel SBA lending is a key linchpin in achieving this goal.

(16:10):
The next page. Thank you. SBA lending is a little different in that it's backed by a strong government guarantee. It could also provide additional risk tolerance to the bank, and at the same time, a larger credit box for customers. It also provides outside non-interest income revenue for the bank if you use it in that context. The SBA program was started in 1953 by the government. At the time in 1953, for many years, it was a government direct lending program. Now, there are over a thousand banks involved in this, and during COVID time between 2020 and 21, there were over 2,000 banks. And as of 9/30/2025, their fiscal year end showed that there were over 78,000 loans made to small businesses, totaling about $37 billion in loans. According to 2025 small business profiles for the states, territories and nation, the US contains 36.2 million small businesses representing 46% of private sector employment, and nine out of 10 new net jobs are created by small businesses.

(17:47):
So yesterday and today, I heard a lot about new ways to bank, all the innovations, larger banks, but I am very happy to say I'm involved in providing capital to small businesses of the US. On top of that, I'm from California and California shows the highest number of small businesses with 4.34 million businesses followed by Texas with 3.52 million and Florida at 3.49 million. These... I knew the data before, but as I was putting this together, it was a little surprising to me how large the percentage of small businesses existing in the US is. I think we could go to the next page.

(18:43):
As a community bank that has to keep up with all the regulatory requirements, as well as all the new innovations coming at us at what is, in my opinion, a lightning speed, taking care of your small business needs and your clients, remembering their relationship and remembering your true goal to the community is a task that's difficult and yet very rewarding. We submitted our application as a team as a community lending division because we went through an online application program and we're getting all our applications and our services online, which was not an easy task. And we're very proud that we went through an end-to-end loan system online for the bank, as well as for the SBA program. Now we have a nationwide SBA application, online platform program. We basically wrote our application based on that. But thinking about all this, I wanted to bring out what it meant to be in SBA lending and small business lending at this time.

(20:09):
So I hope this was helpful. Thank you. I'm so glad you were still here. Like I said, I can't believe I'm the last presentation. If you need anything, please let me know and I'm here to answer all your questions. Thank you.

Chana Schoenberger (20:30):
And does anyone have any questions? Sorry, you all are such a good audience asking all these questions so late.

Audience Member 3 (20:40):
Hello. I was looking up or listening to podcasts about small business lately. I heard it can be hard for a new business to get an SBA loan. An established business can get it a little bit easier because they can show the profit and results. So how do you kind of work with somebody trying to create a new business?

Anna Chung (21:01):
As I mentioned, the small business program itself allows banks to make loans to existing businesses as well as startup businesses. From that point forward, each bank has its own credit box, their appetite for what type of loans they want to make. So if I were a small business owner, you really shouldn't get disappointed; knock on a lot of different banks because there are different banks with different appetites. I find that larger regional banks tend to have smaller programs for new businesses as long as your credit score is good. If you are in the business a year or two, then your smaller community banks will be a lot more aggressive with your credit box. It will be very difficult, to be honest, to find someone to give you a loan if you're a startup. Even if you're a professional coming out of university, if it's your first business, it's going to be difficult, but there are banks that will do it.

(22:09):
And also SBA has a lot of different programs. They have nonprofits called SBDCs. If you go to them, they will help you put a business plan together and they'll help you find a bank. So that would be my advice.

Audience Member 4 (22:33):
With the volume of small business lending that you're doing, are you using any artificial intelligence to help supplement your decision making?

Anna Chung (22:41):
Like I said, we have decided to use an online application process up to a point. It's not all the way through. We only do the application intake and initial credit scoring part of it. It pulls a credit score because it helps the customer to know very quickly whether you are in that box or not. Our bank has our own box, other banks may have it different, but we have a certain criteria, three different types of credit scores. If you pass that, then immediately, which can be as quickly as a few minutes after you fill out the application, it'll tell you whether you are eligible to apply for the rest of the loan with us or not. That's something that we just started, which we're very proud of. However, we do think that the final decision should be made by a person looking at the whole picture and not just the credit scores.

(23:47):
So it's just part of the process. After that, it's looked at by our credit people before a final decision goes out.

Audience Member 5 (23:59):
Hi, just a quick question. Sorry, so loud. So for this wonderful audience here, what would be the best advice you've ever received that you might want to share with people here? As a banker or professionally, just any nugget we can take away.

Anna Chung (24:19):
Let's see. Don't give up. It's not an easy job, it goes up and down, but you have to find something that really interests you. I'm a child of an immigrant. Small business is emotional to me, so I think that helped. But I love numbers. I actually majored in chemistry; had no idea I was going to work for a bank. I came into banking as a part-time job. I loved talking to customers, showing them what to do and not to do, because it was very surprising to find out how little some people know about certain things. I thought bank jobs were all tellers, and that wasn't the case. I don't even know how to count money. So going from chemistry labs to a banking platform was a huge difference, but I loved it. You have to find something that you're passionate about, I think.

Chana Schoenberger (25:49):
Okay. All right. I think that's all the time we have. Anna, that was so excellent. Thank you so much. Give her a round of applause.

(25:59):
I think it was a great two days. I learned a lot. I'm going to always look for the emergency exits when I fly, definitely. But yeah, thank you so much to everybody. This has been a really fantastic conference. I want to thank personally the members of the American Banker editorial team who have been here covering the conference. You can read their fine work on our site, americanbanker.com. You're going to want to subscribe to do that. So those people are Penny Crossman, Nathan Place, Mindy Lucy. Come on up. Keith Berry, Claire Williams, Annie Bramasane, many of whom are here.

Holly Sraeel (26:40):
I have a mic. Okay. And my American Banker live media team, I'd like to call up to the stage. You guys have heard me say this, I think I said it yesterday, this is a lot of work. We do five events in three days. It's actually six. Who's counting? So Mary Ellen Egan, Bailey Reitzel, Megan Lupo. Where are you? Megan Lupo. Mason Segal. Could you get Kate? Kate's coming. We deal with thousands and thousands of details to get to this point. So we hope that you enjoy it. We hope we'll see you next year and we would like to... Are we bowing? No. We would like to say thank you for supporting this community and we wish you continued success. Ready?