"On the retail side, we have seen an increasingly streamlined account opening process for non-traditional online banking"

Ken Nagel
SVP- IT & CIO
Farmers & Merchants Bank

Nagel is responsible for leading F&M’s enterprise-wide information systems initiatives to support the company’s future growth and to maximize the return on its information technology investments.

Steering transformational initiatives within your business environment that typically required IT

Customers are changing the way they bank. We are seeing a consistent increase in transactional banking on non-branch channels. Estimates show that 20-30% of transactional services are transitioning to channels other than the branch. Therefore, when customers come into the branch, we need to be in a position to provide end-to-end service. Recent enhancements include the successful replacement of our ATMs to image ATMs and mobile deposit features with our mobile banking app.

My roles and responsibilities as a CIO

The challenge for CIOs is ensuring they are communicating the value of IT at the strategic level and demonstrating how the IT spend improves efficiencies, reduces costs and increases revenue. The ultimate goal is to provide an IT plan that will help drive new business, transform current processes and provide value to our customers.

Some of the things that you have done to elevate IT’s relationship with business

CIOs should ask one simple question - “What can IT do to help achieve our business goals?” Then, communicate the value of IT, not only as a core competency but as a strategic business
advantage.

Manner in which Data is used to head off problems and complications before they happen

For our infrastructure monitoring, F&M Bank has real-time monitoring and advance early warning systems. For our customers, we utilize real-time fraud monitoring for both online and bank transactions with proactive alerting. From a business perceptive, we utilize data presented in an executive dashboard showing key bank performance indicators such as loan activity, deposit activity and asset quality on a daily basis down to the branch level.

Finally, we utilize our annual goals and metrics to measure our progress on specific items such as customer service goals, cost reduction and business process goals.

The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier

Standardized integration methods are of high importance to F&M Bank, from data standards to communication standards to system integration standards. This is especially true with
payments.

Account origination is complicated and time consuming for both the customer and the banks due to legal and regulatory requirements and it continues to make the on-boarding process challenging for traditional banks. On the retail side, we have seen an increasingly streamlined account opening process for non-traditional online banking. While they do not
have the same that restrictions traditional banks do, the ability to easily open an account is something banks should strive for.

Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment

Mobile banking, for both the consumer and our business customers, is having a very positive impact. Traditional transactional banking is evolving to channels such as mobile, tablets, ATMs and call centers.

Social media is a little trickier due to F&M Banks dedication to ensuring our customers’ security. We continue to review how to best leverage the different social media channels as we grow.

 We leverage cloud services for infrastructure and data services if they support some of our security standards and F&M Banks customers’ needs.