Banks flex their innovation muscle

Conventional wisdom has often scoffed at the notion of innovation emerging from incumbent banks. Global banks tend to be slow moving, overly burdened with legacy technology and entrenched with cultures that are antithetical to entrepreneurial values and progressive development workflows — or so the thinking goes.

This year’s Innovation in Digital Banking Awards submissions offered a range of innovative products covering retail, wholesale and investment banking. However, they also highlighted the real work being done by banks all over the world to reorganise and upgrade their internal procedures and culture.

Driven by the digital acceleration many have experienced over the past two years, banks are reimagining their businesses as digital first and offering products that reflect the technological realities of their customers. 

This year saw an exceptionally high number of quality submissions, which made the judging process incredibly difficult. The 2022 awards received 240 submissions across 19 categories worldwide, from a wealth of banks and technology providers. The insights from our external judging panel were instrumental in determining the final winners from a competitive and crowded field.

In 2022, the digital transformation category garnered the greatest number of award submissions, which highlights just how much work many banks are doing to re-engineer their internal technology.

For the first time, this year we decided to include a category for corporate venture capital (CVC) team of the year. Issues around partnerships between banks and fintech companies are complex and ongoing. The CVC team of the year award is an effort to shine a light on the varied ways traditional banks are engaging with progressive tech companies.

Congratulations to all the winners in this year’s Innovation in Digital Banking Awards.