Austin Capital Financial institution Modernizes its Information Stack in simply 16 Months to Assist First-in-market Merchandise and Providers

• Austin Capital Financial institution, a fast-growing neighborhood financial institution, sought to modernize their information stack to help their evolution right into a product centric and digital first financial institution
• In simply 16 months, the financial institution has adopted Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran, and Thoughtspot, and Atlan as its Lively Metadata Administration resolution of alternative
• The financial institution is now in a position to launch new merchandise at unprecedented velocity and effectiveness, with Atlan supporting buyer information querying for a brand new product with mere hours of implementation effort

A member of the Inc. 5000 listing of fastest-growing personal corporations for seven consecutive years, Austin Capital Financial institution is a pacesetter in neighborhood banking, utilizing know-how and information to gas its nationwide progress.

“We began off a number of years in the past with objectives similar to some other neighborhood financial institution, serving the Austin neighborhood,” shared Ian Bass, Head of Information & Analytics for Austin Capital Financial institution. “After a number of years of being the sponsor financial institution for a FinTech providing, our founders determined we might construct this sort of factor ourselves. So we began constructing our personal digital banking merchandise division, which is the place Credit score Robust was born.”

Credit score Robust represented a brand new frontier for Austin Capital Financial institution, a completely digital providing of loans and contours of credit score, supplied to customers with no credit score historical past or poor credit score to assist them enhance their scores with out the frequent danger of predatory lending or bank cards with astronomical rates of interest.

Remodeling from a neighborhood financial institution, providing conventional merchandise like checking and financial savings accounts with a brick-and-mortar location and on-line portals, right into a digital-first financial institution with a nationwide buyer footprint, was no trivial job. Not solely wouldn’t it demand groundbreaking merchandise and fashionable person experiences, but additionally the very best and brightest minds in Information & Analytics, with the know-how to assist them launch and iterate at unprecedented velocity.

“My function was to construct a contemporary information stack for the financial institution and for Credit score Robust. And after I got here on board, the info and analytics stack was non-existent,” Ian defined.

Austin Capital Financial institution’s transactional information resided in AWS and PostgresSQL databases, and weren’t well-connected, making one thing so simple as querying throughout databases tough to unattainable. To fulfill the numerous calls for of a brand new digital merchandise mannequin, Ian and his staff have been tasked with a real ground-up construct of a contemporary information stack.

“What I actually needed to construct was a NextGen platform that I might use to democratize entry to information and analytics,” Ian shared. “So step one was to virtualize this into an atmosphere the place none of these limitations would exist. That was Snowflake.”

Shifting from implementing Snowflake, Ian’s staff sought an answer to ingest information with out the necessity for important information engineering assets, selecting Fivetran and launching in only one month as they started to combine into their core know-how and construct fashions. Already present on the financial institution have been Tableau and PowerBI, serving as a short lived visualization and evaluation layer.

Simply 16 months later, Austin Capital Financial institution and Credit score Robust would sit atop a totally fashionable information stack, constructed to help digital monetary merchandise that required way more flexibility than conventional banking programs, and architected to run lean.

Once I got here in, none of this existed. And immediately we now have about six completely different SaaS merchandise that comprise our information stack. We now have ThoughtSpot, we use Snowflake, we use Reverse ETL instruments. We now have quite a lot of issues in place that we are able to virtualize and deal with with a two or three individual staff, versus needing a giant engineering staff. We’re paying for these instruments, nevertheless it’s offsetting prices in that we don’t want to rent groups to do that. We will run actually lean, and we are able to pivot in a short time.“

Ian Bass, Head of Information & Analytics

However whereas instrument after instrument was efficiently applied, Ian and his staff have been spending important effort responding to requests for information, and had but to discover a solution to supply this information in a self-service method whereas remaining compliant. Lively Metadata Administration would show to be the lacking piece.

Inherent to Monetary Providers choices is a considerable amount of delicate buyer information, together with addresses, names, start dates, social safety numbers, and account numbers, all helpful to dangerous actors, and requiring cautious stewardship and strict entry controls.

“We needed to guarantee that we’re being good stewards of our buyer’s information. A part of that entails ensuring that solely the proper individuals inside our group have entry to it and that we now have the right controls round it, multi-factor authentication, issues like that,” Ian shared.

Their first step was creating masking insurance policies, making certain that solely licensed staff of Austin Capital Financial institution could be permitted to entry delicate information. Ian’s authentic plan was to implement masking insurance policies in information entry via Snowflake, however discovered that whereas his staff might implement these insurance policies utilizing the instrument, they might be tough to take care of, and to be learn at-a-glance by colleagues with decrease technical aptitude.

As we thought of information governance increasingly, it grew to become clear I needed a instrument to deal with that. You actually need an interface constructed on high of Snowflake so to simply see who has entry to what. And that’s the place Atlan got here into the image. I used to be actually taken with the entire idea of DataOps and what that meant, and what we’re driving towards is each staff being an information staff.“

Ian Bass, Head of Information & Analytics

With the proper Lively Metadata Administration platform, Austin Capital Financial institution might lastly supply self-service to its information customers with out sacrificing robust entry and masking insurance policies.

“Atlan grew to become a necessity. That’s how we management entry in an simply repeatable vogue,” Ian defined. “After which the truth that we now have information lineage on high of it, and the flexibility to arrange all of our data and classifications, and add glossary phrases linked to that information? That’s all icing on the cake for us.”

The place information customers as soon as needed to method Ian and his staff for information requests, his staff now makes use of Atlan to construct queries that allow their colleagues in groups like Operations to run stories on demand. Furthermore, with masking insurance policies in place, this information isn’t solely out there through self-service, however is ruled in a fashion the place solely licensed customers can entry it.

“That was a very highly effective piece of what Atlan supplied for us, and I’ve been very proud of how that’s progressed,” Ian shared.

Among the many earliest alternatives to place their new information stack into observe was a promising new product named FreeKick. “We imagine it’s a first-to-market product, in that it’s designed to assist construct credit score for minors and younger adults,” Ian shared.

FreeKick permits dad and mom to soundly and reliably set up, construct, and shield their kids’s credit score. Constructed on high of a digital financial savings account, FreeKick robotically builds credit score for youngsters aged 14 to 25 as soon as activated. Dad and mom merely make a deposit into their FreeKick account and activate credit score constructing. A father or mother can select to resume the service yearly, or shut the account and obtain 100% of their deposit again. Establishing a robust credit score profile for his or her kids can save their kids greater than $200,000 over their lifetime.

“We predict that is going to be a differentiator within the market,” Ian defined. “There could also be different merchandise or choices on the market, like co-signing on a automobile word, however there’s not likely some other means to do that that avoids danger. If you happen to are available in immediately and deposit $2,500 with our financial institution, it’s an FDIC-insured deposit and also you’re getting a credit score constructing product on your youngsters, without cost. It doesn’t really value you any cash.”

In FreeKick, a promising enterprise mannequin was rising for Austin Capital Financial institution. However essential to success could be a well timed launch earlier than commencement season. And on condition that FreeKick was a departure from their ordinary merchandise, the know-how Austin Capital Financial institution would use to service new accounts couldn’t be tailored in time for launch. 

“Our inner CRM was not going to be prepared as a result of there was new infrastructure and transactional databases to grasp. They hadn’t pieced it collectively but,” Ian shared.

Whereas it was attainable to launch FreeKick with out full technical help from their CRM, every time the consumer service staff would want information about account holders, Ian’s staff must help it.

“My staff, and myself, personally, would have needed to be on name for the consumer service staff, and able to run the question on the drop of a hat as quickly as they have been on the cellphone with someone who was asking questions on their account,” Ian defined.

Ian and his staff additionally thought of a self-service mannequin whereas the CRM was enhanced to help requests for consumer information, however discovered it infeasible. This method would demand that the consumer service staff be given entry to Snowflake, with the right roles and insurance policies, then educated to jot down SQL queries in opposition to their information warehouse.

In Atlan, Ian’s staff discovered an answer. Insights, a metadata-based question builder, would allow their consumer service staff to run queries about buyer information in a self-service method, with out the necessity to be taught SQL.

We used Insights to help our consumer service staff, and Atlan made it a lot simpler and saved a bunch of time for me and my staff. It was a simple and efficient workaround, till our CRM was able to deal with the brand new product. So it actually gave us peace of thoughts. It was one thing that took my staff solely a few hours to place collectively. We couldn’t have carried out that with out Atlan.“

Ian Bass, Head of Information & Analytics

Whereas solely a workaround whereas their CRM caught as much as help the brand new service mannequin that FreeKick demanded, Atlan Insights ensured that Ian’s staff spent simply two hours delivering an answer. The choice would have been painful: Turning their information staff into an on-demand service middle for primary consumer information requests, and taking their eye off constructing a vivid, data-driven future for the financial institution.

With the proper information know-how, activated and accessible utilizing Atlan, Austin Capital Financial institution is in a stronger place to launch new services, and evolve its enterprise mannequin.

“We’re within the part of determining if we need to incorporate these new product launches into our present mannequin structure, or if we need to break it out individually,” Ian shared. “In some instances, that might make issues lots less complicated for us. Having this virtualized and utilizing dbt and Snowflake makes it easy for us to say ‘Right here’s the connections we have to make, right here’s all the info and fashions we now have, and the way does that match into the ecosystem?’ After which we all know what modifications we have to make, and what fashions we have to create.”

Downstream, Austin Capital Financial institution’s current adoption of ThoughtSpot is one other level of optimism for Ian and his staff, affording the flexibleness they should question and visualize on the velocity their enterprise is altering. 

“We’re operating stay queries on high of ThoughtSpot day in and time out, and life is a complete lot less complicated and simpler,” Ian defined. “It’s simply straightforward to jot down up new queries, spin up new stay boards, and pivot shortly. If somebody desires to drill down on a solution, it’s quite simple.”

Moreover, Ian and his staff are wanting ahead to cataloging Thoughtspot belongings in Atlan to higher perceive the affect of modifications to their fashions of their visualization and evaluation layer, and finishing a complete, single view of their information property.

To help their advertising and marketing campaigns for brand new merchandise, and to gather the mandatory information to evolve these merchandise and campaigns shortly, Ian’s staff has shortly added Reverse ETL to their rising set of capabilities. “We might have employed an engineering staff to arrange all these API connections, however we determined to only pay a small sum of money per yr and do it via a instrument that I might arrange myself in a matter of 30 to 60 minutes,” Ian shared.

The highway forward for Austin Capital Financial institution stays formidable, with a mission to construct a 360-degree view of their clients, inclusive of internet exercise. Additionally essential to help a rising variety of deposit-based merchandise might be new metrics and KPIs, supported by Ian’s staff and accessible via Atlan.

Maybe essentially the most thrilling to Austin Capital Financial institution is the introduction of information science and machine studying, enhancing the way in which they market and function. “We need to get into optimization for advertising and marketing spend. We need to put fraud detection fashions in place. We need to guarantee that we’re good stewards of our clients’ information,” Ian defined.

Finally, Austin Capital Financial institution sees Atlan as its window to the world, higher understanding their fast-evolving know-how and processes, and the impacts that modifications to them will make.

“I need all of it to be built-in, in order that we’re in a position to assess affect,” Ian shared. If we now have a change to a subject in a desk that’s upstream of some mannequin, I’d need to perceive the place else that will get used. And I’d know if it’s in a downstream mannequin that mixes 10 tables which might be mixed in a view that aggregates information, or if it’s additionally utilized by an algorithm to optimize advertising and marketing spend.”

If all of our infrastructure is tied into the identical place, we are able to make modifications, and earlier than we make these modifications, perceive the place the affect could be in order that nothing breaks. All of that can must be built-in into Atlan.”

Ian Bass, Head of Information & Analytics

The best way Austin Capital Financial institution’s information staff operates, thanks partly to its funding in know-how and executing the proper technique, is unrecognizable from the beginning of their modernization journey simply 16 months in the past.

“With the instruments we now have in place now, we’re in a position to measure the affect of product modifications immediately,” Ian shared. “We will additionally perceive how modifications in our advertising and marketing technique affect our enterprise. For instance, we did a deep dive on key phrase searches that we have been spending on and made a considerable change. And we’re not simply measuring the effectiveness of that, however we have been additionally in a position to predict what would occur. We’re following fairly intently in-line with what that prediction was.”

However past the apparent advantages their know-how, information staff, and course of supply, the tradition of Austin Capital Financial institution, from client-facing staff to executives, is quickly altering towards being data-driven.

I’ve these instruments, however the President of Credit score Robust and the CEO of Austin Capital Financial institution even have entry to those instruments. They will see the effectiveness of modifications inside hours or days of implementing. It’s one thing we didn’t have in place earlier than. We don’t should make these new constructs and connections, they’re in place already and we are able to pivot in a short time.”

Ian Bass, Head of Information & Analytics

Picture by Etienne Martin on Unsplash