Truist launches innovation unit. First up: games, prizes and a new smartphone app
Charlotte-based Truist bank has launched an innovation arm designed to bring more tech-centric products to customers — and its first is a smartphone game that gives people prizes for saving money.
The new team, called Truist Foundry, is a self-contained group working to get products to market quickly and create a startup feel within the bank, Foundry leader Lindsay Holden said.
“I like to describe it as a startup within Truist,” she told The Charlotte Observer.
Holden was previously CEO of San Francisco-based startup Long Game, a personal finance app that Truist acquired this year. The app, which launched in 2016, rewards users for saving money in a bank account by allowing them to unlock games and earn cash prizes.
“The idea was to… make it into a tool where people have better financial outcomes,” Holden told the Observer. “Financial services need to start meeting people where they are, and that means going mobile-first.”
The team’s first project will be re-launching that app, now called Truist Long Game, early next year. It’ll be essentially the same concept “with more Truist purple,” Holden joked.
Her former company’s startup culture has carried over to the new team at Truist, she said. The Foundry is structured like a small firm, with its own engineers, designers, and operations and risk employees that are based all over the country.
“It’s a new thing that we’re experimenting with, to bring all the teams that you would have across a startup into one team (at Truist),” she said.
A shift in focus at Truist
Atlanta-based SunTrust and Winston-Salem-based BB&T merged to form Truist in 2019, picking Charlotte for the new bank’s headquarter city.
For much of the last couple of years, bank leaders have been heavily focused on completing the $66 billion merger of the former banks. But now, Holden said, the bank is shifting gears.
“There has been a ton of focus on the merger in the last couple years,” she said. “Now that the merger is complete, there’s a renewed focus on (innovation efforts).”
The bank may have some catching up to do when it comes to tech and digital banking.
In June, consumer research firm J.D. Power ranked Truist last among its peers for customer satisfaction with its mobile app and overall online experience, the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
Truist has made other innovation-focused investments this year as well. Over the summer, the bank opened a new 100,000-square-foot Innovation and Technology Center in its uptown headquarters, complete with indoor “tree houses” and virtual reality labs. Truist has declined to disclose the cost of the project.
Truist is Charlotte’s second-largest bank by deposits, with 20% of the local market. It has more than 3,000 employees here.
This story was originally published October 28, 2022 at 5:40 AM with the headline "Truist launches innovation unit. First up: games, prizes and a new smartphone app."
