Simmons Bank changes the game with mobile deposit scoring and key Jack Henry^™ integrations

How often have you heard that if you want to reduce costs, improve customer experience, and move quickly, you can only choose two?

That was the recent challenge faced by Arkansas-headquartered Simmons Bank.

In addition to their home state, the bank operates locations across Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Founded in 1903, they offer comprehensive financial solutions delivered with a client-centric approach. What started as a small, hometown bank more than 120 years ago has today grown into a premier financial institution serving the mid-south through a total of 223 branches.

Simmons Bank understood the challenges, but they ultimately decided to try to achieve all three business goals instead of just settling for two.

“That’s exactly what we set out to accomplish when we developed our in-house mobile deposit scoring and qualification algorithm with the help of Jack Henry,” says Alex Carriles, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer. In his role, Carriles oversees the bank’s digital banking strategy, customer experience through digital channels, and customer acquisition through digital tools.

elevating to meet customer demand

“After moving to Banno in 2019,” recalls Carriles, “customer demand for mobile deposit was so high that it would take our back-office team multiple days to respond to the enrollment requests.”

The bank turned to their internal development team along with Jack Henry’s support, robust technology tools, and key integrations.

Simmons Bank was then able to develop an in-house scoring and qualification algorithm, which evaluates every customer daily and recalculates their individual limits monthly. This score determines a customer’s mobile deposit eligibility, individual deposit limits, risk level, and required deposit holds.

Scores are then stored in each customer’s CIF via jXchange integration. A Silverlake customization reads this score on a scheduled routine and uses it to apply appropriate deposit holds through JHA SmartPay Remote Deposit Anywhere (RDA) at the time of deposit.

Customer scores are also mapped to a risk profile for RDA mobile deposits and passed to Jack Henry’s Enterprise Payment Solutions through RDA’s APls. This step either enrolls or updates a customer’s mobile deposit settings, including their deposit limits and risk rules.

“Because the scoring process takes two to three days to fully update across all systems for new customers, we added a jhaEnterprise Workflow to enable instant access,” explains Carriles. “When a customer logs in to Banno for the first time, an event triggers the workflow to automatically enroll them in mobile deposit with default basic limits. This allows customers to fund their new account right away, without waiting for manual intervention from customer support.”

He adds, “Today, customers are enrolled immediately at default limits and right-sized limits are automatically assigned two to three days later by the algorithm.”

further enhancements for the win

Another innovative piece Simmons Bank added involves custom Jack Henry code to segregate and process mobile deposit files every five seconds. This enables near-real-time memo posting and funds availability, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, providing one of the most seamless and immediate mobile deposit experiences in the industry.

“This solution is both innovative and unique because it assesses the risk of the depositor, not just the deposit,” Carriles notes. “By scoring the customer instead of the check, we’ve been able to dramatically reduce fraud while simultaneously empowering customers with higher deposit limits and instant access to their funds.”

He continues, “This risk-scoring model allows us to accept much larger check deposits while simultaneously increasing fraud protection. The result is a safer, more scalable, and more customer-friendly mobile deposit experience.”

measurable results

In part due to this undertaking, Simmons Bank’s Digital Banking Net Promoter Score increased to a market-leading rating of 78.1 and a rating of 9.4 out of 10 for digital satisfaction up to this point in 2025.

Simmons Bank has also seen a 96% reduction in fraud losses, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and reducing fraud to less than 1 bp, one of the lowest levels in the industry.

“We’ve achieved a dramatically improved customer experience as well,” Carriles observes, “with customer deposit limits increased from $1,500 per month to up to $150,000, and mobile deposit funds available in just five seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rather than the next business day.”

The bank’s fraud department also had their workload reduced by being more selective about which mobile deposits are sent for review – based on the customer’s score.

award-winning innovation

In recognition of their creative use of technology to elevate the experience for their customers and employees, Simmons Bank was named the 2025 recipient of the Jack Henry Cobalt Awards in The Changemaker category.

This annual award recognizes financial institutions for exceptional accomplishments in leveraging technology, services, and innovation to enhance operational efficiency, advance business practices, and boost both user experience and staff productivity.

delivering changemaking experiences

“Since starting this project, we’ve added more features and integrations to improve its functionality and refine the customer experience year after year,” comments Carriles. “The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from customers and associates alike. It’s a solution that proves you don’t have to settle for just good enough when you can reach for greatness. With the right vision, tools and execution, you really can have it all.”