Georgia Technology Summit 2025: Vikram Ramani with Synovus

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Georgia Technology Summit 2025 at the Woodruff Arts Center. This is Business RadioX. And now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here broadcasting live at Georgia Technology Summit 2025. So excited to be talking to my next guest. Uh, today we have Vikram Ramani with Synovus. Welcome.

Vikram Ramani: Thank you, thank you. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, um, for our listeners, the two people out there who aren’t familiar with Synovus, do you mind sharing a little bit about mission purpose?

Vikram Ramani: Absolutely. So Synovus is a financial corporation. We’re a bank, $16 billion in assets. We’re the largest bank incorporated in Georgia right now. So we do, uh, commercial banking, small business, banking and consumer banking. And along with that we have wealth brokerage trust businesses as well. Uh, traditional bank trying to be, uh, grow, uh, in our area. And we are in the southeast and the five states in the southeast. And, uh, we have a lot of momentum behind us to get to be a bigger bank.

Lee Kantor: So how what’s the the banking kind of, uh, business climate today? There’s so many young people, especially, that are attracted to online only, and they’ve never walked into a bank. They probably never will walk into an actual physical location is part of Cenovus’s roadmap to have more or less, um, you know, actual brick and mortar stores. What how do how do you see that?

Vikram Ramani: It’s it’s it’s going to be a combination. When Covid hit us, we all thought that all the brick and mortars are going to go away. But five years after that, now you see that there’s more growing. And, you know, brick and mortars are becoming more experience centers like the bigger banks are doing, like Chase and so forth. So we will as a bank, as a regional bank, always have a good combination of both. We’re going to have that as well. And especially being a commercial bank, we deal with larger paychecks, larger sizes and so forth. And those, um, customers like to come into the branch to, uh, deal with us. So we’re going to have that. But on the on the other side, where the younger generation, the Gen Zs, who like to do everything out of the mobile, we also have a plan for that in terms of growing our digital footprint and so forth.

Lee Kantor: So how do you kind of view, uh, brick and mortar? Is it like kind of a community center? You want it to be a place where people feel comfortable going and building actual relationships, human to human, with some of the bankers? Like, what’s your view of that? Um, you know how that fits into your marketing?

Vikram Ramani: That is correct. Our operating model has been within the branches. We have relationship managers that really take care of the clients because, uh, cross-selling is very important. You start something, a small business account, you look at the customer, look at their wealth portfolio, try to see if they can kind of embed that into our product suite and so forth. So exactly that we want to kind of build a true relationship with our customers.

Lee Kantor: And then why is it important for Synovus to be part of the Tag community?

Vikram Ramani: So as you know, technology is right in the center of, uh, transformation for any industry, whether it’s manufacturing, financial services, fintech, and so forth. I’ve been in financial services fintech for all through my life over 25 plus years, and I feel that being a part of this organization, I’m also a board member and part of the executive committee. Uh, being part of this organization really puts us not just our bank, but the entire state in a place where we can grow our technology footprint and ecosystem. And that’s important to the bank, because that’s going to be the center of a lot of the transformation work that we’re going to put forward towards.

Lee Kantor: So how do you, as a leader of an organization like Synovus, how do you kind of get the employees to buy into that and want to participate, volunteer, take an active role in an organization, any business organization, but specifically since we’re here, like into Tag?

Vikram Ramani: Yeah. So I have been associated tag, even in my previous, uh, gigs and so forth. And, uh, it’s the art of influencing, right? You’ve got to it’s part of their career path. Networking is a very important thing. Uh, you’ve probably talked to a few of my peers from other, uh, corporations as well. Uh, previously. And just the power of us interacting, collaborating with the other CIO’s, other organizations is very helpful, especially in our industry, in the technology industry, where new things are getting rolled out. Like I, we talked to each other, each other CEOs see what’s working, what’s not working, and so forth. And, uh, that’s a big help. And my organization, the technology organization within Synovus. They are loving it. I bring them over. I think there’s about 5 or 10 people here today as well. And they’re loving the networking opportunity and the and the opportunity to collaborate with other people as well.

Lee Kantor: Are you finding that young people are embracing kind of this human to human, face to face interactions that a tag brings about, or is it are they more comfortable in kind of a digital online virtual interaction rather than, you know, coming here? And I mean, I’ve seen so many people hugging, shaking hands like they haven’t seen each other in a long time. Um, how do you kind of communicate the value of that to a young person who, you know, is a digital native that, you know, they’re best friends they may never have met in person?

Vikram Ramani: Yeah. I think when Covid hit us, I think it kind of just took us in a different way. But I think over the past two years, especially within our bank, where we’re encouraging people to come into the office, I’ve seen a lot more youngsters coming in into the office and wanting to meet people. Learn from the seniors, if you will, on what’s going on and so forth. Water cooler chats. Um, I feel we’re going in that direction right now. It’s kind of flipped. I think 21, 22 people were still kind of happy to stay home because of, um.

Lee Kantor: It’s convenient and Covid like.

Vikram Ramani: And exactly.

Lee Kantor: They were fitting kind of their work around their life. And now they got to fit their life around their work.

Vikram Ramani: Yeah. And I think that human touch is very important. And the, the younger generation probably doesn’t know that we’re really pushing for them to come into the office, work with others. And so far I’ve seen that, um, they want to come in more than, you know, the established, uh, employees and the organizations.

Lee Kantor: I think that there is a misconception about going back to the office and that something that young people, especially if they graduated and then started virtual and then they never got to experience, is that serendipity that happens in an office situation where you can just bump into somebody and get an answer to a question in two seconds. Those little kind of collisions that occur just naturally in the course of your day. I think the young people miss out on that. And there’s a lot of mentoring and opportunities that they’re not going to have because they don’t. They’re not in the room. When something great happens, someone says, see how that person handled that? That’s they can learn and just kind of accidentally that I think they missed out on. They don’t even know they missed out on.

Vikram Ramani: Exactly, exactly. And that’s what we’re promoting and encouraging our employees here. And I think if you look at most of the corporations in Atlanta, they’re going the same trajectory as well, um, to help that happen.

Lee Kantor: So now, uh, tell us about your upcoming speech. What are you talking about today?

Vikram Ramani: Oh, we’re we’re talking about AI. Uh, wow. Surprise is the first person.

Lee Kantor: Exactly AI today.

Vikram Ramani: That’s weird. Uh, I think I’m talking about AI across industries. I’ve got a great group of panelists there. Uh, some of my ex-colleagues as well. We’re just going to talk about AI in terms of how it’s going to be a competitive advantage. The goods and the bads are the scope of improvement that we need within those things as well. Because it’s a new technology. It’s super disruptive. How do you handle that across regulated industries like ours? Because we’re probably the most healthcare and financial services are the most regulated industry. So it’s going to be very interesting. Uh, discussion uh, this afternoon.

Lee Kantor: So any sneak peeks? Is there any spoilers you can give out?

Vikram Ramani: Uh. Nothing much. We’re we’re just, uh, going with the tide. Uh, so it’s, uh.

Lee Kantor: So where’s, uh, from a banking standpoint, where’s kind of the low hanging fruit for AI?

Vikram Ramani: Um, so in banking, because we deal with a lot of loans, deposits and so forth, you know, bringing biases, uh, is a big thing that we need to be very sensitive about. Um, so what we’re doing within financial services and banks is that the low hanging fruit is the operational efficiencies that happen. Happened, right? Um, you read 1000 pages of contracts every day. The legal department reads. I would be a great bet. Does not. Pii information does not. Anything else? We could easily build something that makes their life easier. Things like that. Call centers where people call in to do stuff. If you want to go and do an audit of those things, let’s start using an AI agent. Things like that is what we’re looking at right now. We don’t want to go into the areas where, uh, it could cause bias into lending, loans and so forth. We’re very careful not to touch that part. The, uh, the. And then so we’re focusing on the back end operational efficiencies part right now.

Lee Kantor: So what’s on the roadmap for Synovus over the next few years? What’s your vision of, uh, how big it can be and how how much better it can be?

Vikram Ramani: I think, uh, our journey started about two years back. We built the foundation. We don’t want to miss the bus on this very disruptive technology in AI. So we’ve built the foundation, a customized type of LM that we’ve built for us. And as and when all the boxes check on the areas that we can work on, it’ll start coming into it. I think this this technology is going to be super disruptive. But we’ve got to be careful. We’ve got to be methodical before we start implementing it. And that’s kind of what is going to drive some of my strategy as well going forward for the bank.

Lee Kantor: Now when it comes to growth, um, it’s Georgia based. And then you’re going to expand out from there.

Vikram Ramani: That’s the so so we’re in five states. We’re in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina. And um, a growth could happen many different ways. It could be organic growth going into a different state and so forth. It could be M&A and so forth. It’s a bigger discussion. I think this year, probably those type of discussions will uh, there’s a lot of, uh, you know, um, tailwinds. I would say with that, over the past two years, there’s a lot of headwinds in those type of discussions, because what happened to the banking industry with Silicon Valley falling and all that stuff. So this this year there’s going to be a lot of discussions on that. So but we’re focused on organic growth. That has to go on. We’re in the southeast. So um we’re going to continue to focus on that.

Lee Kantor: So how do you kind of compete against kind of these stadium banks that are, you know, plastering their name on, uh, big stadiums? The, the, the ones that are the mega brands. Like what? Where is your niche?

Vikram Ramani: We don’t we don’t really, uh, compete with the big banks like the JP Morgan Chase or the tourists of the world Bank of America and so forth. Regional banking has got its its, uh, place in the US economy. It’s more customer centric. Um, and that’s where we kind of focus on, uh, most regional banks are that way. Community banks are the same way and so forth. The mega banks are in every place, right? And it’s just volume that they have. So, um, that’s where we come in because we’re customer centricity is our model, and that’s where we, um, you know, grow.

Lee Kantor: So customer centric, community centric, really be visible within the community, serve the community, and then just kind of immerse yourself within that and then build the brand from there outward.

Vikram Ramani: That is correct. Yep.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, uh, about Synovus, what’s the best way to connect?

Vikram Ramani: You can start with me.

Lee Kantor: Uh, start with you.

Vikram Ramani: Yeah, you can start with me, and I can get you there. Obviously, our website’s got a lot of details in it. Um, then we can go from there.

Lee Kantor: All right. Well, Vikram, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Vikram Ramani: Thank you very much.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll be back in a few. At Georgia Technology Summit 2025.