George Bell
George Bell
George Bell is currently a member of the United Community Bank board serving on the Risk and Audit committees. Bell is a purposeful, authentic, innovative, results driven IT financial services executive with a long track record of delivering high quality results and having a significant impact on the organizations he has associated with. He has implemented business critical technology capabilities and functions throughout his career and managed international teams. His naturally inquisitive and analytical nature provide the ideal foundation for unearthing uncommon areas of value driven opportunity. He has a strong reputation for building and maintaining productive partnerships and values teamwork as an essential success factor.
Bell began his career in BB&T’s leadership development program in 1982 and was quickly earmarked for management opportunities in the Operations Division due to his strong quantitative instincts and knack for fostering teamwork. This initial direct exposure with computers gave Bell the technical underpinnings to efficiently exercise his penchant for solving business problems which became the foundation and launch into numerous progressively larger technology leadership roles. Execution highlights include; developing the initial marketing database, creating the first Asset/Liability forecasting model, introducing and implementing relational processing (DB2), developing the first client/account aggregation models, and providing methodologies to integrate desperate applications.
After eleven years at BB&T, Bell was recruited by NationsBank (Bank of America-BOA) in 1994 to assist with the “Model Bank” development efforts and the ambition to become the first coast to coast bank. Bell’s nine year tenure at BOA included managing nationwide applications (CIF, Teller, Debit Card, ATM, Call Center), driving system consolidation efforts for the aforementioned applications, coordinating migration efforts for major Bank acquisitions, devising the initial component based development methodology, developing the initial CRM migration strategy, and managing the initial foray into offshore support.
In 2002, Bell rejoined BB&T with an initial focus on helping BB&T think like a big bank while developing a tangible “single view of the client” strategy. These efforts led to the maturation of the technology supporting the bank’s Integrated Relationship Management strategy which was a key differentiator for BB&T. Continued application delivery and management success led to progressive expansion of responsibilities and accountability for over 65% of BB&T’s application portfolio. Bell also was the inaugural co-chair for the African American Affinity (AAA) group, started an employee focused ambassador program, reinvigorated underperforming teams, developed skill transition models, successfully executed the first major global sourcing project (converted CIF to DB2), and established the foundation for our Faster Payments strategy (FTM – Zelle and TCH).
Within Truist, Bell was accountable for HR, Legal, Leadership Institute and Business Management functions. Bell’s team successfully delivered the first significant conversion deliverables; bringing all teammates and sales incentive plans onto common systems. Bell also championed creating ‘operating leverage’ within the business office and set the tone for greater focus on Teammate well-being.
A native of New Bern, North Carolina, Bell is an honors graduate of Barton College in Wilson, NC with a major in Mathematics and minor in Business Administration. He was a four year varsity letterman and captain of the basketball team. Bell obtained his Master’s in Business Administration from East Carolina University.