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Somewhere along a salmon-run river on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, Frank Bonetto raised his rifle and coolly fired a warning shot over the head of an approaching grizzly bear. Bonetto is a serious man who's seldom caught off guard. He's also vice chairman of San Francisco-based Bank of the West, a bank with 460 locations in 16 states and assets of $39 billion that, coincidentally, uses a bear as its logo.
So it's no wonder that Bonetto demands unwavering performance from his technology and people, too. Bank of the West's top IT executive is Donald Ward, senior executive vice president and Operations and Systems Group head. The two men are responsible for setting the technology direction for a banking operation growing rapidly through acquisitions.
Bank of the West, which had revenue of $1.7 billion last year, acquired Community First Bankshares Inc. of Union City, Tenn., and USBD Bancorp of Stockton, Calif., last year. The deals were valued, respectively, at $1.2 billion and $245 million and increased assets by a third while growing the bank's geographic footprint by 60%.
Systems and processes needed to be converted, state-specific issues managed. From a technology view, taming this wild growth -- not to mention addressing industry-altering trends like electronic bill presentment -- hasn't been easy. But the team of Bonetto and Ward has taken dead aim at the problems and so far has been able to ward off potential hazards, thanks largely to a no-nonsense approach.
Banks often take a risk-averse stance on many things, including technology. How do you view technology's role?
Frank Bonetto: We are totally dependent upon it. We work with the technology group as a partner in getting things done. We've always had a point of view here that we do the need-to-have instead of the nice-to-have because we've got limited technology resources. And so we are very selective in how we allocate them. In our banking group, we have a set number of resources available for our projects, which include everything from new releases of existing software to new software and everything in between. We meet monthly to prioritize.
Donald Ward: Primarily because of our size, we don't have the deep pockets for a large research and development group. So we focus on software and solutions that are available through vendors. We are not going to be on the bleeding edge; rather, [we are] quick adapters or quick followers. Anytime a business [unit] looks for a solution, we scan the vending universe as well as look at other banks to see who has something that's already proven that we can purchase and install very quickly and with minimal customization. We typically go after what we think is necessary to make us competitive in the marketplace and not after solutions with a lot of frills. In doing so, we tend to limit our risk.
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