Truist: Digital Straddle Initiative

Truist is a retail and corporate bank headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The bank brand was created in 2019 after the merger of BB&T and SunTrust, two southeastern regional financial institutions. Post-merger Truist is the 7th largest bank in the US by assets size and operates in three segments: Consumer Banking and Wealth, Corporate and Commercial Banking, and Insurance Holdings.

Truist needed a path to facilitate digital innovation while still paving the way for broader back office migration efforts following the merger. It also wanted to de-risk the effort while not overloading contact centers or technology capabilities. To accomplish these goals, the bank engineered a technical approach called the Digital Straddle, which allowed them to build a new client-facing digital experience on top of three different systems of record: heritage SunTrust and BB&T, as well as the target Truist core.

Through a new digital identity platform and microservices routing framework, the bank could associate clients to either the new front end or back end through flags against the digital identity record. This allowed for maximum flexibility and stability during the migration.

The Digital Straddle has been a major success for Truist as they undergo a “merger of equals.” The project was completed in 14 months and the bank began realizing value almost immediately following the March 2021 go-live.