Truist announced Monday it has acquired the Zaloni Arena platform from data technology solution provider Zaloni to assist in the financial institution’s data strategy and reduce IT costs.

The technology, once added to the Truist platform, can be built out with new capabilities like API calls, user experience enhancements, and software that has been developed for high usability. The acquisition follows the $545 billion bank’s 3.8% increase in noninterest expenses in the second quarter to $3.2 billion. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Charlotte, NC.-based digital bank had been looking to acquire the data technology for a “period of months” in order to speed its ability to find and leverage data, drive insights development and more quickly shift its data organization to a product-oriented mindset, Truist Chief Data Officer Tracy Daniels told Bank Automation News.

Read more on Truist’s digital efforts and cloud migration

“We will use [the platform] to help substantiate our expectations around data management, giving us a more automated way to consistently drive out the expectations for various personas who use our data,” she said.

Zaloni’s data management and data governance platform is a code that will be integrated as part of the Truist data management stack, Daniels said. The platform also delivers trusted data for “advanced analytics and artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) use cases using an intelligent and collaborative data catalog, automated governance and unified observability to reduce IT costs and accelerate time,” she added.

As far as reducing costs, Truist is uncertain exactly how much savings the platform will bring but does know that it offers “the opportunity to be able to get scale,” Daniels said.

Looking ahead, once the bank fully integrates the platform, it plans to “exploit the capabilities” and bring to life “a backlog of ideas on where to build out this platform and take it next,” Daniels added.

Through the acquisition, Truist will gain Zaloni’s Chief Product Officer Ben Sharma and Chief Technology Officer Ashwin Nayak.

Bank Automation Summit Fall 2022, taking place Sept. 19-20 in Seattle, is a crucial event on automation and automation technology in banking. Truist’s Ken Meyer, divisional chief information officer and experience officer for consumer technology, experience and innovation will speak at the event.  Learn more and register for Bank Automation Summit Fall 2022.