First Citizens Bank and Silicon Valley Bank are slowly integrating their tech stacks while keeping their individual digital road maps relatively separate. 

“There has been a period of isolation where First Citizens wanted us to complete our digital journey and road map,” Milton Santiago, head of global digital solutions at SVB, told Bank Automation News. “That means that there has been no systems integration [and] there’s been no mainframe integration.”

During the mini banking crisis in 2023, SVB experienced a deposit run that led to its collapse and purchase by First Citizens. 

Prior to the March 2023 collapse, SVB had multiple core platforms to manage its international business. But after the sale of its United Kingdom operations to HSBC in May 2023, SVB consolidated its core operations and has its private banking customers “using one solution, one mainframe, one core,” Santiago said. The bank is in the process of doing the same for its commercial clients, he said. 

Different digital road maps 

First Citizens is allowing SVB to continue with the road map it created in 2023 to provide a better digital banking experience for its 132,000 clients by the end of 2025, Santiago said. 

The two banks serve different client segments, thus integrating all operations doesn’t make sense, he said.  

Core capabilities, including money transfer and foreign exchange platforms, might be integrated, however additional services like SVB’s expense management tool may not be, Santiago said. 

The banks have no plans to integrate their core banking systems due to a difference in operations and functionality, he said. 

SVB uses Oracle’s Flexcube core banking system while First Citizens uses Finastra’s Fusion Phoenix core banking system, according to a May 2023 release from Finastra. 

SVB is exploring integrating AI into its platform with little pushback from First Citizens, despite looming industrywide regulatory concerns, Santiago said. Its call center is using AI as a performance management tool in its call centers for analyzing what triggered a customer to call the helpline and how their customer support can better improve their services, he said.