5 Questions with Citizens VP of Innovation RJ Sherman

RJ Sherman, the vice president of innovation at Citizens, isn’t a believer in using technology for technology’s sake. Sometimes, he noted, older technology can be a better solution than trendy technology.

Sherman spoke with Bank Automation News about the role automation plays at the Providence, R.I.-based bank, the emerging technology he’s most excited about, and what he learned from motorcycle racing that he applies to banking.

Instead of focusing on the technology, Sherman likes to start with the customer and what would meet the customer’s expectations and needs.

“Sometimes, when we think about new customer solutions, we can be really excited by the potential for it and we may leverage antiquated or older technology and that’s okay as well,” Sherman said.

However, Sherman is currently excited about two technologies: artificial intelligence and machine learning, and blockchain technologies. Banks are just now exploring these technologies, he said, and AI has “unlimited potential” to really change how banks do business.

The $176.7 billion bank is currently exploring how to use AI on documents, Sherman said.

“We’re exploring use cases on how we can use artificial intelligence to quickly analyze complex documents and complex contracts and just remove some of that complexity and augment a worker, and how can we make it faster to respond to customers or client requests,” Sherman said.

What follows is an edited version of the conversation.

Bank Automation News: What role does automation play in innovation at Citizens?

RJ Sherman: When I think about automation in banking, it’s really for me has to start at the the evolving customer needs and preferences. So, when we think of banking as moving towards this digital first, automation-enabled world, we have to think around what does that mean from a customer perspective. And what sort of products and services can we deliver.

We’ve essentially designed our innovation program to do just that. We were unpacking those unmet customer needs, and then looking at the technologies that we have and saying: ‘Okay, what makes sense?’

For me, automation is one of those tools out there. It can streamline processes, and it can help us bring together more insights for customers. But, ultimately, it is freeing up time for our colleagues to focus on how we can deliver better advice, how we can show up better for our customers and remove some of those repetitive ongoing tasks that really consume a lot of time.

BAN: What emerging technologies that excite you are you exploring or integrating at Citizens?

RS: When I think about emerging technologies that are definitely just going to shake the snow globe of banking, the top two that come to my mind is first: artificial intelligence and machine learning. First, there’s just almost endless use cases for AI within banking. It’s automation, insight extraction, improving customer interaction, how we streamline work, and there’s opportunities to reduce risk — really the possibilities are endless. We’ve got a lot of projects in flight, both front office and back office, that are specifically targeting deployments of artificial intelligence.

The second one I’d say is blockchain. As we’re coming up on almost 10 years of the technology, the applications within banking are reaching an interesting level of maturity. It’s the appropriate time to begin calculated experimentation with that technology, to see what is the art of the possible for this, go deep into use cases, and start to unpack what we really think the risk is and unpack what the opportunities are, beyond cryptocurrencies. So much of the hype is cryptocurrencies, but there’s been so much recent news around new applications and new ways to leverage blockchain applications within financial services.

I think, we don’t fully know the potential of either of those technologies just yet. It’s all experimentation and seeing where we can really have those unique intersections of exciting technology with those unmet customer needs.

BAN: What specific product or feature are you prioritizing this year? And what role does automation play in that?

RS: A lot of the products that we’re working on right now are focused around delivering tailored insights for customers. When I think about automation, it’s how can we pull together these vast, different sources of data to be able to deliver insights from a commercial and a consumer perspective. We need to be able to have tailored insight experience across both those markets. Ultimately, at the end of the day, whether it’s a commercial or consumer client, they’re very used to the consumer interaction that they have in the regular, in their other life of Amazons, Google, the world and beyond. So by delivering those tailored insights, there’s a lot that we can do as a bank to help improve a customer’s or client’s life and how they operate.

BAN: What is the biggest challenge in banking? What’s the biggest opportunity?

RS: The biggest challenge and the opportunity are two sides of the same coin in many ways. The biggest challenge we have is customer expectations. Needs and preferences are just evolving at warp speed. And the role that a traditional bank has always played is fundamentally changing, being forced to by a lot of external applications and a lot of other interactions that customers have outside of banking. So it’s imperative that we have to innovate and reinvent ourselves.

That’s where the opportunity side of this comes from. We have this whole world of uncertainty and change, but it comes with tremendous potential. We can be thinking about modernization; we can be thinking about end-to-end digitization, front office, back office, but it also has given us permission to experiment in ways and with ideas that are bigger.

BAN: You were almost a professional motorcycle racer. Any lessons that you’ve learned from your motorcycle days that you can apply to banking?

RS: Racing motorcycles is an interesting solo team sport. As a rider, you’re doing the practice, you’re doing the work. But you know, when you’ve got a pit, it takes a team effort.

So, I think about it in two ways — always doing your part, always thinking faster, thinking to what’s coming next, but then also seeing the big picture of everything that’s going on around you.

Sometimes you’ve just got to persevere through the tough times. Motorcycle racing comes with crashes. You’ve just got to pick yourself up and persevere because you’re not going to always win every race. You’ve got to be agile and nimble to continue and grow.