Symcor Inc a Toronto-based company has signed a 10-year agreement to outsource "a significant portion" of the Sin Trust bank's back-office banking operations. In addition, Symcor will handle bank's check clearing, lock box processing and statement production functions. Symcor is already well known in providing similar back-office services to five of the 15 largest North American banks.
Symcor will purchase or lease those facilities from Sun Trust in those locations, which adds to the Canadian company's existing operations in Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando, Fla., Charlotte, N.C. and Los Angeles.
As part of the deal, about 1,500 Sun Trust employees will be moved out of the bank and, according to a company spokesman, 54 positions could be eliminated. However, the bank did ensured transparency in the process. In fact last year, the bank sold branches and office space across its southeastern footprint in a sale/leaseback agreement and cut staffing.
For Sun Trust, the latest move is part of the bank's company-wide cost-cutting initiative announced last spring, dubbed "Efficiency in Execution," or E Squared, as told by company spokesman Mike McCoy. He further added,"This is consistent with the rest of our E Squared program'.
However the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed in the statement, nor did the bank disclose possible cost savings as a result of the deal.
