Client Story

Continuing a Legacy with a Strategic System Migration

Baker Boyer National Bank Turns to a Long-term, Trusted Partner

On November 10, 1869 – over one hundred and fifty years ago – Baker Boyer National Bank established itself as the first independently run bank in the future state of Washington, making them the “original Pacific Northwest bank.”

Based in Walla Walla, Washington, Baker Boyer has been family-owned and operated for six generations, taking great pride in its long tradition of strength, stability, financial guidance and exceptional personal service. Their offerings include personal banking, business banking and wealth management.

Baker Boyer credits their success to an entrepreneurial approach, always looking for innovative ways to add value to the communities they serve and believing in long-term investments in their clients and communities to grow family legacies locally.

Calling on the support of a reliable partner

The historical relationship between Baker Boyer and FIS® has been extensive. The bank has used the FIS Charlotte trust accounting platform since the 1970s. So, when Baker Boyer realized they wanted to transition their brokerage business to internal trust operations, they looked no further than their reliable partnership with FIS.

Baker Boyer required this system migration because their wealth management clients were under two different regulators and two lines of business – brokerage and trust. When separated by different core accounting platforms and different regulated agencies, this meant more costs. By bringing the data for the two lines of business into a single platform, Baker Boyer could reduce costs and streamline operations.

Teamwork for a successful systems migration

Baker Boyer decided to transition the brokerage business to the FIS Charlotte trust accounting system they were already using for the trust business.

Thorin Zanger, senior developer at Baker Boyer, recalls, “The FIS Charlotte trust accounting platform was central to migrating the data for our brokerage line of business onto the same platform as our trust business.”

To support the migration, internal teams from Baker Boyer collaborated with the FIS team.

Vice president and solutions architecture manager of Baker Boyer, Matt West, said, “It was the open architecture of the platform and having access to the sequel database and all of the internals of the Charlotte platform that made the difference.”

The CRM integration allowed Baker Boyer to track their accounts from prospect to account closing and maintenance.

At a Glance

OBJECTIVE
Bring the data for two lines of business into a single platform to reduce costs and streamline operations.
FIS SOLUTIONS

FIS® Trust Accounting

RESULTS
After the migration, Baker Boyer National Bank lowered operational costs, automated manual processes, reduced errors and improved account opening time by 90%, reducing account opening time from three hours to 15 minutes.

Impact

The FIS platform had all the openness and responsive technical support the bank needed to be able to successfully complete the migration in an automated way. The CRM integration has allowed the bank to track all of their accounts from beginning to end, from prospect to account closing and account maintenance.

90% improvement in account set-up

Reduced operational costs

The CRM integration has allowed us to track all of our accounts from beginning to end, from prospect to account closing and account maintenance.”
− Melissa Steffanson | trust associate, Baker Boyer National Bank
The FIS [Charlotte] platform had all the openness and responsive technical support that we knew we were going to need to be able to successfully do this in an automated way. That was the key, so we didn’t have dozens of employees entering everything by hand.”
− Thorin Zanger | senior developer, Baker Boyer National Bank
Historically, to set up an account it was taking us about three hours. We were able to take that task down to about 15 minutes per account.”
− Matt West | vice president, solutions architecture manager, Baker Boyer National Bank