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Founded in 1891 and headquar tered in Atlanta, GA, SunTrust is a leading providerof retail and commercial banking services. Employing more than 10,000 people,the bank generates annual revenues of approximately USD8.2 billion.

Business challengeSunTrust recognized that strictregulatory reporting requirementsalso represented an oppor tunity todrive protabilityif it could harnessthe commercial benet of the reportdata.

TransformationToday, SunTrust can deploy reportingsolutions faster than everhelping tosatisfy new regulatory requirementscost-effectively, make better-informedcommercial decisions and boost

protability.

SunTrustUsing insights from essentialmanagement reports to

deliver commercial benets

SunTrust is makingbusiness decisions thatreduce risk, cut costs anddrive protability.

Dean Harrelson

Senior Vice President Manager of

OperationsCorporate Functions Business

Information Ofce

SunTrust

Business benets:

33%reduction in time required foractuals close cycle

Up to 90% faster loading of reportingcubes enables timelyintraday forecasting

Informeddecision-making helpsboost protability

Dean HarrelsonSenior Vice President Manager ofOperationsCorporate FunctionsBusiness Information OfceSunTrust

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New risks, newregulations

In the wake of the global economicrecession, new regulatory requirementsfor the banking industry are becomingmore frequent and more stringent.Banks must move quickly to meeta range of data-driven reportingrequirements, including liquidity capital,risk-adjusted return on capital (RAROC),comprehensive capital analysis andreview (CCAR), Basel III and more.

Regulatory requirements have a growingimpact on the costs of deliveringnancial products and services. Toensure protability, banks face thechallenge of uniting traditionally separateorganizational views of risk and nance toshape portfolios that continue to delivervalue for customers and shareholders.

Recognizing anopportunitySunTrust, a leading retail bank based in Atlanta, GA, recognized that the changingregulatory environment presented both achallenge and an opportunity.

Dean Harrelson, Senior Vice PresidentManager of OperationsCorporateFunctions Business Information Ofceat SunTrust, explains: Regulatoryapproaches are becoming moresophisticated and data-driven. Today,many of our regulators perform their ownstatistical modeling with the data that weprovide, which increases the emphasison the veracity, volume and variety of ourreporting data.

In the past, we relied on standaloneplatforms designed to meet individualreporting requirements as they arose. As reporting requirements grew, thesetactical approaches began to createissues when we attempted to roll up ourpositions to analyze exposure across theorganizationan essential capability if weare to satisfy stringent regulations.

Multiple processescreate confusionOne of the challenges we identiedwas the separation of nance and riskcommunities in the organization. Becauseeach community had traditionally used itsown systems and processes for reporting,there were often different denitions forsimilar metrics, even if the underlying datafor the calculations was derived fromidentical source systems.

The result was a dif ferent version of thetruth in each business arealeading toa reporting process that was complex,time-consuming and error-prone. Forexample, it could take weeks to delivernancial reports to our senior line-of-business teams, which increased the riskof important decisions being made on thebasis of incomplete or erroneous data.

We wanted to rapidly and reliably answerquestions such as: what is the quantityand volume of net new loans in thecurrent year? How many new loans havewe originated in our mortgage, wholesaleand consumer businesses? And what is

the protability of each of our businessareas, products and customer accounts? We realized that these insights would notonly help to satisfy our regulators, butalso enable us to make better-informeddecisions to drive commercial success.

Beginning thetransformation As a rst step toward a single version ofthe truth for regulatory and managementreporting, SunTrust aggregated itsdata-sourcing methodologies fororiginated loans, loan losses andprojected loan losses. The resultingsolutions, named risk data warehouses,enabled the bank to measure, report andact on its credit position.

Our risk data warehouses sparked thebeginning of a far-reaching transformationprocess, but they did not address thechallenge of using multiple tacticalsolutions for regulatory reporting,recalls Dean Harrelson. To solve thechallenge, we decided to unite our riskdata warehouses and nance reportingin a single platform, replacing multipletactical solutions with a centralized,strategic approach.

The centralized approach would helpus to obtain accurate insight into multipleviews of protability, including actuals,forecasts and plans. The aim was to use

these insights to understand the nancialimpact of factors such as new regulations,make better-informed commercialdecisions and drive our protability.

We decided to unite our risk datawarehouses and nance reportingin a single platform, replacingmultiple tactical solutions with a

centralized, strategic approach. Dean Harrelson, Senior Vice PresidentManager of OperationsCorporateFunctions Business Information Ofce,SunTrust

The assistance that we havereceived from the IBM team so farhas been invaluable.

Dean Harrelson, Senior Vice PresidentManager of OperationsCorporateFunctions Business Information Ofce,SunTrust

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Selecting best-of-breed Oraclesolutions

To create the new repor ting platform,SunTrust looked for a best -of-breedsolution. The bank needed a solutionthat would support high volumes ofdebit and credit transactions, as well asinstrument-level protability analyses.To meet t he forecasting and planningrequirements, the new solution neededthe ability to incorporate Basel, CCAR andRAROC views of nancial data.

SunTrust sees Oracle software as thede facto standard for analytics-basedmanagement reporting in the US nancialservices industry, and we have chosenOracle solutions as the core of ourtransformation program, says DeanHarrelson. When the time came toimplement a central platform for nanceand risk reporting, we determined thatOracle offered the comprehensivesolution portfolio we needed to satisfy ourreporting requirements.

Additionally, Oracle solutions providea common set of best-practiceapproaches to manage all of ourreporting requirements. Rather thanconstantly hunting for specialists in theniche technologies that drove our tacticalsolutions, we saw the chance to investin training on the Oracle solutions andenable cross-skilled personnel to workexibly across multiple business areas.

Finding the rightpartnerInitially, SunTrust worked with a t hird partyintegrator to deploy the Oracle HyperionPlanning solutions for its forecastingprocesses, but faced a number ofsignicant challenges.

The way that the Oracle HyperionPlanning solution was rst conguredrequired our personnel to usecomplicated manual import processes,which meant that it was extremely difcultto get information into the forecastingsystem, says Dean Harrelson. Wheninformation was in the forecasting system,even reasonable user inputs could resultin erroneous forecasting data. Worse still,the conguration was so complex thatwe could not reliably estimate when aforecast would be ready for delivery to ourbusiness users.

Getting back ontrack with IBMTo continue its deployment ofthe Oracle solutions, SunTrustengaged expert consultants fromIBM Global Business Services.

We needed a partner with theexperience, resources and skills toget our Oracle deployment back ontrack, says Dean Harrelson. The IBMGlobal Business Services team rose tothe challenge, and delivered all of theon-site resources we needed to get ourplanning and forecasting solutions livewithin an incredibly tight time-frame. Notonly did the IBM team help to deployour new planning solution from scratch,they helped us to redeploy the Oracleforecasting solution, and remedy all of theprevious issues.

Better still, IBM offered a exiblethree-tier pricing mode for on, off-shoreand near-shore consulting resources,ensuring that we could bring the projectin cost-effectively. Without question,IBM Global Business Services helped

us to win back creditability for ourtransformation project. We consider IBMto be one of our most tr usted advisors,and we are continuing to work closelywith the IBM Global Business Servicesteam to develop the capabilities of ourOracle reporting platform.

SunTrust is now working with IBMGlobal Business Services to augment itsOracle Essbase analytics solutions withOracle Hyperion Planning, Oracle DataRelationship Management and OracleFinancial Services Analytical Applications.The new solution is replacing tacticalsolutions with a unied platform foractuals, forecasting and planning.

The Oracle platform preserves underlyingsource data, and tolerates multiple datadenitions in a way that is transparentto end users. This enables differentdepartments in SunTrust to viewnancial reports based on their ownindividual data denitions, and providesan organization-wide view of protabilitythat factors in data from the nance andrisk communities.

Dean Harrelson comments: Theassistance that we have receivedfrom the IBM team so far has beeninvaluable. The IBM team combinesa deep understanding of the specicrequirements of the nancial servicesindustry with the ability to execute on atruly global scalereach and resources

that we feel few other vendors canmatch. Whats more, IBMs leadershipin the analytics space gives us accessto the top talent we need to help reneour approach to delivering nancialintelligence through the Oracle platform.

Without question, IBM GlobalBusiness Services helped us to winback creditability for ourtransformation project.

Dean Harrelson, Senior Vice PresidentManager of OperationsCorporateFunctions Business Information Ofce,SunTrust

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Please Recycle

Solution components Oracle Data Relationship Management

Oracle Essbase

Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications

Oracle Hyperion Planning

IBM Global Business Services

Take the next step

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Connect with us

Copyright IBM Corporation 2015, IBM Corporation, 1 New Orchard Road, Armonk, NY 10504 U.S .A. Produced in the United States of A merica, October 2015.

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Accurate reportingshrinks risk

Today, SunTrust is using the Oraclesolutions implemented by IBM GlobalBusiness Services to drive a moreresponsive, accurate and efcientreporting process.

Thanks to our Oracle solutions, wecan load the reporting cubes for ourintraday nancial forecasts more than90 percent faster than was possiblebefore, says Dean Harrelson. Becauseour reporting process is now so muchfaster, we can now per form soft closes,with iterative simulations that enableus to fold reactions and feedback fromline-of-business teams and seniorexecutives into our forecasts, and checkthat our assumptions are correct.

He adds: When we started ourtransformation, it took us nine businessdays to close our books for actuals,and those reports were based onindirect-costs data that was one monthout of date. Today, we can close our

books for actuals in just six days basedon up-to-date information on indirectcosts, some 33 percent faster thanpreviously possible.

Harnessing thecommercialadvantage

With faster access to accuratenancial insights, SunTrust is makingbetter-informed decisions about itsproducts and pricing, helping to ensurecontinued commercial success.

Regulatory requirements are nowbecoming factors that inuence pricing,says Dean Harrelson. As we continueour deployment with the IBM team, wewill gain the ability to calculate return onregulatory capital for actuals, enablingbetter-informed decision-making.

SunTrust is currently working on aproject to model its indirect costs,which is important because it willenable buyers and sellers of serviceswithin the organization to gain adeeper understanding of operationalcosts, and see the real-time impact ofpotential changes.

If we want to see the effect of offshoringa contact center, we will be able toadjust key drivers in the Oracle HyperionPlanning solution and see the predictedchanges to fully loaded net incomeinstantly, says Dean Harrelson. Whenthis capability goes live in a few months,we expect positive changes to our costculture, which we estimate will lift ourprice-earnings ratio and boost the valueof the business.

Dean Harrelson concludes: Thanks toour Oracle nancial reporting solutionsand IBM Global Business Services,SunTrust can make business decisionsthat reduce risk, cut costs and driveprotability, transforming a shiftingregulatory environment into a signicantsource of competitive advantage.

ORC12384-USEN-00

As we continue our deploymentwith the IBM team, we will gainthe ability to calculate return onregulatory capital for actuals,enabling better-informeddecision-making.

Dean Harrelson, Senior Vice President

Manager of OperationsCorporateFunctions Business Information Ofce,SunTrust

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