Banks are big customers at IBM. In the first quarter, financial services accounted for 29 percent of IBM's revenue, or $6.9 billion.

The technology company, based in Armonk, N.Y., will hold its annual shareholders meeting in Charlotte today. IBM, one of the country's most widely held stocks, is also one of the Triangle's largest private employers, with about 11,000 workers in Research Triangle Park.

Sullins, a 17-year veteran of Bank of America, is described by IBM as a "banking transformation consultant." Most recently, he's been working on a program that does back-office work for mortgage lenders.

Announced last year, it goes live next month with its first customer, the Coastal Federal Credit Union in Raleigh. IBM says it will cut Coastal's mortgage origination costs by 30 percent to 40 percent, and Sullins envisions expanding the program to lenders in credit cards and auto loans.

Sullins spoke with Christina Rexrode, a staff writer with the Charlotte Observer. Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Tell me about the mortgage program.

A: The process of going through a loan ... hasn't changed materially in 30 years. There's a lack of data, a lot of paper, a lack of digitization.

Say the lender asks for a pay stub to verify employment. Historically, that was faxed in, someone looks at it, puts it in a file. Well, OK, the customer can still fax it to us, or they can mail it in, but for us, that [now] goes into an electronic database, then we use optical character recognition technology to look at the elements of the text form and convert it to data. Once you get the data, you can analyze and categorize it. Versus the old way, I'd just have to re-key everything and type it in myself.

Q: Isn't it a bad time to be in the mortgage business?

A: It depends on what angle you're coming from. From our perspective, this is the best time possible, because this is exposing pain points to lenders unlike anything they've ever seen. They're looking for ways to cut costs, and they're dealing with increasing regulation. You have to do that with technology, [but] it's very hard for a [smaller] lender to go do this by themselves. They would have to outlay a lot of capital to build a new system. For us, you pay by the transaction.

Q: So banks still are originating plenty of mortgages?

A: Everyone backed down some, but the community banks, the credit unions, they're growing. They never got into subprime. They have a loyal member base.

For us, we have a balanced portfolio: conforming loans, government loans, nonconforming loans. As subprime loans have gone down, the demand for FHA [Federal Housing Administration] loans has gone up. We would not say no to subprime, but we'd say no to someone who isn't adhering to regulations.

Q: Banks aren't in as much trouble as we think?

A: Your large universal banks and your small niche lenders are going to come out ahead. The big banks, they've got a balanced portfolio. The small banks -- like a credit union with a member base they're really focused on, or a bank that focuses on just one product, like wealth management -- they're in a position to increase market share.