Undoubtedly 2020 has been a year of great change, as millions of employees and customers around the world had to make a dramatic shift from the office to home working, and commerce has been driven even further into the digital realm. Many have commented that new things – whether products, services or ways of working – that would have taken months or years to implement under normal circumstances, or even regarded as impossible, were realised in days or weeks due to pressing necessity.
During the rapid restructuring of everyday life, it has become obvious that the resources that banks across the globe have invested in digitally transforming their businesses from top to bottom over the past decade has paid off during the Covid-19 crisis. Impressively, most of the submissions for this year’s awards included new products and services aimed at responding to client needs – whether retail customers, small and medium-sized enterprises, corporates or institutions – during the global lockdown.