Wintrust, NCR Team For Digital First Banking

Wintrust Financial Corporation has selected global enterprise technology provider NCR Corporation to provide its new digital-first banking platform, according to a press release.

Wintrust is a $43 billion platform with 15 branded community bank subsidiaries and will leverage NCR to help provide a new “unique branded experience” and aid customers across its 180 locations, changing the experience at both digital and branch channels, the release stated.

NCR Digital First Banking is a modern and cloud-native, application programming interface (API)-based program working on customer service and to provide cost-effective services.

“Clients come first and increasingly our digital services are a key part of delivering our exceptional service to our customers,” said Tom Ormseth, executive vice president of digital channels and transaction banking at Wintrust, in the release. “We have chosen NCR to partner with to maintain our commitment to our customers to deliver the latest digital capabilities in the marketplace.”

“To win in the hyper-competitive banking landscape today, it requires both a differentiated technology capability and a leadership mindset like that at Wintrust,” said Douglas Brown, president of digital banking at NCR Corporation, in the release. “Wintrust’s investment in digital-first banking positions them for success in the increasingly challenging financial services landscape.”

Digital-first banking could foreshadow a larger trend that will last long after the pandemic, according to Brown in a conversation with PYMNTS earlier this year. Brown said the “fundamental shifts” to financial services would be permanent.

He said relationships will be of paramount importance as people seek out the safest ways to manage money with social distancing and other such precautions in effect, but there will also be new considerations with technology, such as mobile assets and remote ways of dealing with money.

PYMNTS’ June 2020 Digital-First Banking Tracker, done in collaboration with NCR, looked at the realization setting in that much business could be done remotely. The tracker noted the huge surges in online account openings as well as mobile banking traffic, concluding that financial institutions need to focus on “smooth experiences” to make sure customers can do what they need to.