Executive Vice President & Chief Information Officer
First Horizons
Mohan Sankararaman is Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer and Executive Management Committee Member at First Horizon Corporation, a leading regional bank concentrated in the Southeast with 84.1 billion in assets, over $3.5 billion in annual revenue and approximately 7,600 employees. Known for his innovative thinking, exceptional stakeholder engagement skills and collaborative leadership style, he is an accomplished business leader with more than 30 years of experience leading strategic initiatives in the financial services industry.
Sankararaman has extensive experience spearheading and guiding large-scale teams to successfully execute complex and disruptive IT and operational initiatives. He has the unique ability to blend strategic, technical and tactical skills to translate overall business objectives into practical, actionable and measurable roadmaps and solutions.
At First Horizon, Sankararaman leads the technology division, managing 800 technology associates and contractors and monitoring more than 400 banking center locations across 12 states while helping to drive revenue and optimize efficiency and profitability. He currently leads the company's cloud migration, steering the migration from on-premise data centers to the cloud to successfully orchestrate the exit from on-premise infrastructure to enhance scalability and efficiency. He continues to build a secure technological infrastructure by developing a robust cybersecurity program that ensures strong protection against emerging threats.
He has been with First Horizon since 2009. Prior to his current role, he was Director of Strategic Initiatives, managing the day-to-day activities for several mergers and acquisitions to ensure a smooth integration, conversion and transition for the bank's clients and associates. He also served as Deputy Chief Information Officer for the wholesale banking technology group, where he oversaw the development, implementation and support of technology solutions for the bank's small business, commercial and corporate clients. He also managed enterprise quality assurance, enterprise architecture and enterprise systems integration for the company.
After starting their AI journeys deploying a handful of models, many banks now have hundreds—sometimes thousands. Each business unit—credit scores, fraud detection, customer churn, pricing, compliance, etc. etc.— builds its own models. And each vendor brings embedded AI. Effective portfolio management means knowing what’s running, where and on what data so you don’t drown in operational overhead or accumulate catastrophic risk. Panelists discuss building centralized model registries that actually get used, implementing continuous monitoring to catch drift before it causes failures, the risk of vendors embedding AI you can’t audit, and why “shadow AI”—models built outside official channels—represents both your biggest risk and best source of innovation, and how to govern it without killing it.