Truist

Truist, formed from the merger of SunTrust and BB&T, inherited over 100 years of combined brand equity alongside vast, inconsistently structured data from two established regional banks. Serving millions of retail banking customers, the bank struggled to move beyond generic marketing campaigns that produced low conversion rates. Customers increasingly expected proactive, personalized financial guidance from their bank rather than undifferentiated product promotions. Without a clean data foundation and the ability to act on behavioral signals at scale, Truist risked disengagement across its digital channels and ceded competitive ground to more digitally native financial institutions.

Truist deployed Personetics' AI-powered cognitive banking platform to transform raw transaction data into individualized customer engagement. Before any machine learning could run effectively, Truist invested heavily in data governance — cleaning and structuring data from two merged institutions into a unified, usable foundation. With that groundwork in place, the Personetics platform applied machine learning and predictive analytics to identify behavioral signals across the retail customer base: income patterns, recurring expenses, spending shifts, and upcoming bills. These signals drive timely, personalized financial insights delivered through Truist's digital banking app, replacing broad campaign blasts with context-aware, one-to-one guidance integrated directly into the customer's existing digital experience.

Truist has delivered over 1 billion personalized financial insights through the Personetics platform, making it one of the largest AI-driven personalization deployments in US retail banking. The initiative has become a core pillar of Truist's digital strategy, with performance marketing now driving 65% of the bank's digital sales. Key outcomes include:

• 1B+ insights delivered to retail customers through the digital banking app
• 65% of digital sales attributed to the performance marketing engine built on this data foundation
• Measurably improved digital engagement metrics cited by Truist leadership
• Sherry Graziano, EVP Head of Digital, named to Banking Automation News Executives to Watch List, reflecting the program's industry recognition

• Data quality precedes AI value: Truist's success required significant upfront investment in data governance before deploying any personalization technology — clean, well-structured data is non-negotiable.
• Merger complexity demands a unified data strategy: Banks consolidating disparate systems must resolve data inconsistencies before layering on advanced analytics tools.
• Behavioral signals outperform demographic targeting: Transaction-level insights (income timing, spending shifts, bill patterns) drive far higher relevance than traditional segment-based campaigns.
• Personalization at scale is achievable: Delivering over 1 billion insights across millions of customers demonstrates that individualized engagement is an operational reality, not a future aspiration.
• Tie AI initiatives to measurable business outcomes: Framing personalization as performance marketing — trackable to account openings and product adoption — secures executive alignment and sustained investment.