Innovation in Digital Banking Awards 2022

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 cultures.

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. The 2022 awards received 240 submissions across 19 categories worldwide, from a wealth of banks and technology providers.

A mix of external and internal judges considered each entry against range of variables — impact on a local domestic market, demonstrable impact on specific market segments, proven performance metrics and a creative approach to product development and customer problems.

This year saw an exceptionally high number of quality submissions which made the judging process incredibly difficult. The insights from our external judging panel were instrumental in determining the final winners from a competitive and crowded field. We would like to extend our thanks to our independent judging panel of industry experts for their efforts.

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 and cultures. With the pandemic accelerating digital adoption generally, many banks are well positioned to build on work to deliver these digital-first products.

Many submissions were also focused not only on selling financial products to customers, but on offering services that enable financial health and support marginalised demographic groups.

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.

For the second year in a row, we have invited banks to submit an entry for chief innovation officer or chief information officer (CIO) of the year. The CIOs in competition were all examples of leaders who are driving change and championing innovation at their organisation. Our 2022 winner would have been a front runner at any bank in any other year. However, the added realities of the war in Ukraine only served to illuminate the impressive projects at Alfa-Bank Ukraine and highlight the importance a bank has in any society.

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

Regions

Global — Citi

According to Citi’s CEO, Jane Fraser, Citi is a digital-first bank. Last year, the bank spent $10bn on technology across the bank and this year it has budgeted approximately $11bn, which is a 30% increase compared to 2020. In addition, Citi has increased the technology headcount by over 30% and now has more than 30,000 software engineers.

Over the past year and a half, Citi has delivered a range of organic financial innovations, invested in a range of fintech and start-ups across Citi and Citi Ventures, and strategically partnered with leading companies to co-create and provide clients with the best solutions for their needs.

One of the key differentiators for Citi is its global network and local market presence, which provides the bank with the ability to scale resources in 95 countries and jurisdictions. These global capabilities give the bank a deep understanding of local regulations, politics, businesses and economic conditions.

Citi Velocity, the bank’s digital content platform that delivers electronic access for institutional clients, has almost 100,000 client users spread over almost 150 countries. The digital platform attracted 200,000 client visits in 2021, a 138% increase compared to before the pandemic.

“We continue to invest in technology-enabled growth initiatives across Citi’s unmatched global platform,” said Stuart Riley, head of technology, Citi’s institutional clients group. “This includes partnering with clients to develop innovative solutions, attracting top-level technology talent and delivering an optimised client experience across products and geographies. We are excited about the road ahead and will continue to leverage new technologies and improve delivery capability so that we can operate our bank more efficiently and better serve clients.”

As part of the innovation strategy, Citi has taken part in various external partnerships to explore blockchain-based payment solutions. One such example from the bank’s treasury and trade solutions business includes the partnership with Alibaba and Ant Group. This resulted in a real-time, blockchain-based cross-border payment service that accelerates and enables global e-commerce. The aim of the payments system was to improve traditional cross-border funds transfers in respect of turnaround time, cost efficiency and visibility of funds status.

Alibaba outlined a vision to co-create a real, legally robust and scalable platform with Citi and Ant Group. The aim was to establish an open blockchain platform that can enable all forms of business-to-business payments with a better cash cycle and transform the payment ecosystem to the benefit of the community.

The resulting system is an instant, 24/7, blockchain-powered cross-border payment solution using accounts in Singapore, Hong Kong and the US. Among other features, the solution offers intelligent payment routing, beneficiary account validation, real-time liquidity monitoring and foreign exchange integration. The solution aims to instantly transfer liquidity on a 24/7 basis across four countries in seven currencies. Alibaba has completed billions of payments in real-time transfers on-demand initiated via this solution. Around 10% of these were outside of normal business hours.

Additionally, Citi launched a ‘mobile-first’ credit card, Custom Cash Credit, in June 2021. With no annual fee, a cash-back credit card automatically adapts to spending trends — card members are rewarded with 5% cash-back on their top spend category without having to periodically and manually select a reward category. Card members can immediately add the card to their digital wallet, track the shipment of their physical card and walk through a customised checklist within minutes after their application is approved. This checklist helps card members set up their account easily and is then updated with the next logical actions, including setting up alerts, going paperless and exploring merchant offers. A ‘horse-race tracker’ also shows card members their top spend category at a quick glance, so they always know how they are earning rewards. Each transaction has enriched details and reward information, providing the transparency that card members want.

A month after launching Citi Custom Cash, the bank followed up with Citi Self Invest. The self-directed digital offering offers clients the ability to make no-commission trades in stocks, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds with no account minimums. It also provides educational resources to learn more about investing and personal finance, as well as an integrated dashboard with Citi banking accounts to see a complete picture of customers’ financial life — 90% of users completed their first investment transaction with Citi in the past four months.

“This solution is an example of thinking beyond what is done today by embracing new technology to create broader impacts,” says Randy Ou, group treasury vice-president of Citi.

Africa — Nedbank Mozambique

Nedbank Mozambique, a universal bank, opened in 2011, with the vision and ambition of changing the way banking is done in Mozambique. The bank continually invests in searching new ways of translating customer financial needs and lifestyles in an enhanced digital offering. Its strategy is anchored in two main goals:

1. To invest to become an intelligent multi-channel bank, that uses customer relationship management and automation to increase customer choice and control, and to offer enhanced multi-channel experiences to engage customers and to reinforce relations with customers.
2. To be a socially engaging bank, that takes advantage of social media interactions and customers’ social networks to create customer intimacy, grow and develop the market.

By following this strategic approach, the bank is looking to grow, improve performance and achieve a competitive advantage in the near and long term. The bank continues to invest in branch network optimisation, multichannel integration, and proactive and reactive management interaction based on customer needs.

For its corporate customers, the bank offers digital solutions that close the loop of payments, receivables and cash-flow management needs across the client’s value chain. Nedbank Mozambique partnered with several corporate customers to develop customised and non-customised digital solutions, integrated with their accounting and IT systems, to bring convenience, easiness and speed to their banking transactions across their value chain.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Nedbank Mozambique encouraged its customers to use digital banking facilities to allow for 24/7 banking. Customers can make payments from wherever they are, particularly if they are not able to go to a branch, and enjoy permanent access to all financial information in real time.

During 2021, and in order to push digital offerings during the Covid period, Nedbank Mozambique introduced new functionalities on its digital channels, Nedbank Online and Nedbank Mobile. Those include loan application, letters of credit request, bank guarantees, two-factor log-in, credit and debit card activation, and Visa verification.

The bank not only focused on customer retention, but also in attracting new segments and bank unbanked customers. Nedbank launched Pay Uey, a service which allows merchants to generate bank references so people can make payments digitally through remote channels.

Asia-Pacific — CTBC Bank

CTBC Bank’s vision for digitalisation is described as ‘digital end-to-end, banking everywhere’. The bank is looking to redesign customer journeys and to make banking services accessible anywhere for clients with big data, robotic process automation, blockchain, cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI).

The bank serves 10.14 million customers with digitalisation technology in Taiwan’s financial industry. Some 5.5 million customers have applied for online and mobile banking, and 79% of users are active on digital channels. More than 88% of financial services are completed on digital channels, and the number of account openings happening digitally doubled in 2021.

CTBC implemented a systematic digital transformation, enhancing not only customer digital experiences but also internal operating processes, therefore increasing overall revenue and service quality.

The bank leveraged AI and built the Wealth Management Intelligent Dashboard to support a human-machine collaborative business model. It also developed a personalised coupon recommender engine on its Home Bank app. More than 90% of customers who had collected digital coupons stayed active and returned to use other financial services, causing website traffic to increase by 33%.

In 2021, CTBC participated in the National Labor Economic Relief Loan application project. Bank customers were able to apply for the project at anytime and anywhere. Only 2% of customers applied from a physical branch and more than 15% applied during non-business hours.

CTBC is the only member of R3, the enterprise software vendor and creator of the Corda blockchain platform, in Taiwan. The supply chain finance blockchain solution at the bank was developed to enable suppliers, buyers and CTBC to transfer the trusted transaction data on the transparent and immutable blockchain in 2021.

The bank has redesigned its physical branches with the CTBC Intelligent Branch Guide, which improves customer efficiency by 30%.

“With pre-emptive action, CTBC Bank is taking the opportunity to strengthen its digital technology services, investing over T$7.67bn ($256.6m) towards the modernisation of information core and technology transformation to better serve more than 5.6 million digital customers, 99% online loan applications and 77% online card applications,” says James Chen, president of CTBC Bank.

Central and eastern Europe — Alfa-Bank Ukraine

In 2021, Alfa-Bank Ukraine launched a new personalised client experience — the ‘Sense SuperApp’ digital bank. Last year, users downloaded Sense to their smartphones almost three million times, with a record 560,000 downloads in December alone.

The bank’s strategy created completely new financial products, while maintaining the stability of usual services and the ability to solve as many issues as possible remotely. The bank had previously introduced around six new enhancements to their banking applications a year. With the current strategy, that rose to 52 new application features in 2021. The number of digital customers at the bank rose from 800,000 over the past eight years to 1.65 million in the past 15 months leading to the end of 2021. Customer communication is now done in chats without scripts, in creative spaces instead of offices.

This year, Sense SuperApp became the core of the bank’s work, maintaining consistent, stable access despite the adverse conditions many people are living under in Ukraine. 

Despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and despite two months of martial law, six more updates and 18 new features have been released. In 2021, the client base grew by more than 25% and, generally, the number of transactions every month exceeds four million.

Since the first days of the war, the bank has provided its clients with the opportunity to support Ukraine through the purchase of military government bonds through a relationship manager. Then the Sense SuperApp team adapted the investment mechanics so that anyone can buy war bonds online. 

“Last year, we were focused on creating the best digital bank in the region, based on the universal bank. Despite the war changing our plans for this year, it could not cancel them,” says Rafal Juszczak, CEO of Alfa-Bank Ukraine.

“Our innovative products have gained even more relevance: everything must work fast, consistently and remotely. Although we keep focusing on innovations, now we are also a bank during a time of martial law. Not only do we keep track of figures and Sense SuperApp’s growth and its new clients but also funds raised for volunteers, repelled DDoS-attacks, which are cyber attacks designed to crash a server. We have managed to do more than we could imagine and we are not going to stop. Yes, it is hard, but moments like this define us and our values — being digital, being there for our clients especially when they need it, and helping as much as we can. That is our faith in a better future.”

Latin America — BBVA

Innovation and digitisation remain at the heart of BBVA’s overall strategy. As a result of this commitment to innovation and digitisation, 13.9 million of the bank’s Latam customers interact with the bank through digital channels; more than 83% do so through the mobile app; and seven out of 10 sales take place digitally.

In the past year, BBVA has developed the following:

• Double Play, which lets customers use their mobile phone to complete the online process of taking out an Azul credit card or a CREA card (for customers without a credit history). The 100% digital sign-up process is the first of its kind in the Mexican banking sector. Double Play’s sign-up model makes it possible to offer access to banking to large segments of the population that otherwise would not have access to a credit card, as they do not have a regular salary or income.
• GloMo, BBVA’s mobile banking global platform, is available directly to bank customers with a pre-approved loan. New customers are offered a user-friendly path, with a short form with basic details and information about their salary and years of work, validate their identity through a selfie and sign the contract digitally.

In August 2021, the bank launched Tu Médico Particular (your private doctor), in partnership with international health insurance provider Bupa. Tu Médico Particular at BBVA México is an insurance product focused on financial health. Many bank customers that do not save for common health contingencies (such as flu, fever, stomach pain or minor fractures) end up sacrificing their assets or savings or taking out loans to pay for healthcare. The service offers families financial support to face the most common illnesses. This insurance for those who do not usually have insurance was launched in the middle of a global pandemic.

The BBVA Enterprises App was launched in Peru in April 2021 for the self-employed with a ‘Mi Negocio’ profile and in Colombia in October 2021. With a single user experience, the global app reached a total of 126,000 clients in Peru and 9000 clients in Colombia.

“BBVA is designing and delivering products and solutions that help our Latin American customers and clients accomplish their financial goals, while supporting them to achieve better financial health,” says Hugo Nájera, head of client solutions, BBVA México. 

North America — TD Bank

TD is Canada’s largest digital retail and mobile bank with more than eight million digitally active users, of which 75% are mobile users. The bank has a strong digital placement in both the US and Canada, including a top-10 position among the largest US banks in terms of mobile monthly active users.

The bank’s digital product delivery approach is to ‘build once and deploy twice’ model, where applicable. TD’s digital strategy is based on a five-pillar approach of adoption, engagement, customer experience, sales and self-service.

TD’s Canadian platform has seen active digital users rise by 20%, mobile sessions rise by 40%, customer satisfaction rise by 10%, and self-service financial transactions rise by 7% since the start of the pandemic. Recent innovations and product launches have centred around the concept of ‘modern internal convenience’, as the bank looks to further improve the digital customer experience especially in the fields of financial wellness and digital inclusion using hyper-personalisation and empathy.

The bank claims it is trying to humanise the digital experience, not digitise the human experience. This includes product offerings such as the TD Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Powered Personalisation Platform, as well as TD Insurance Severe Weather Alerts. In addition, the bank is also looking at its product offerings to further broaden financial inclusion with the launch of TD Easy Trade.

TD’s Personalisation Platform has experienced strong customer engagement since inception, with less than 1% of customers turning off the alerts. The offering’s use cases have seen strong customer traction, with 43% of users engaging with new insights (versus the industry best-in-class benchmark of 17%), and an additional 20% engagement with repeat insights. Further, the platform was able to maintain high levels of prediction success, as evident with strong positive customer satisfaction levels with 20% of users providing feedback. These AI-driven nudges were designed to not only provide advice, but importantly to also navigate customers to actionable insights.

TD Digital Lab developed the new Equity, Internal Diversity and Inclusion Resource Hub, which further cements inclusive innovation in product and service development at TD. The new platform supports the inclusion of the unique perspectives and experiences of different community groups into the development, design, and build of TD products and services. 

Middle East — Bank ABC

Founded in 1980, Bank ABC is a Middle Eastern and north African (MENA) bank with a global presence. The bank’s comprehensive multi-year group-wide digital-transformation programme is aimed at building a client-centric bank of the future, fuelling digital-transformation in banking in the region.

“We are honoured to win The Banker’s Innovation in Digital Banking Award for the Middle East,” says Sael Al Waary, deputy group CEO, Bank ABC. “It is a testament to our commitment to build the ‘bank of the future’. Our aspiration to transform banking is complemented by our digital strategy, which will enhance customer experience and deliver better value for our shareholders.”

The bank employs an agile cloud-first strategy, to deliver a seamless digital banking experience. It is dedicated to ‘disrupt, enhance and leapfrog’ traditional banking, by leveraging cutting-edge cloud-native technologies, blue-sky innovation, artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics and open application programming interfaces (APIs) to enhance each stage of the client experience journey.

In 2021, Bank ABC accelerated the transformation of the wholesale bank, with a focus on creating a seamless omnichannel client experience, starting with global transaction banking and ultimately across all the wholesale banking and treasury products.

The bank’s transition to cloud was in partnership with Amazon Web Services and API connectivity, and subsequently launched the region’s first end-to-end digital corporate onboarding service. Bank ABC also enhanced its digital capabilities across cash management, documentary trade and supply chain finance. This completed phase one of the Trade Operations Hubbing Project and proof of concepts for AI-adoption in its trade finance operations; it also devised target operating models that maximise digitisation and automation of its operations.

The digital mobile-only retail bank ‘ila’ is used to co-create tailored solutions with clients and is set to scale its offering across the MENA retail network, targeting Jordan later this year.

The launch of ila Bank was the first exclusively cloud-based digital, mobile-only bank in Bahrain. Leveraging insights from its customer-centric offering and social media engagement, ila introduced 26 app releases within 28 months of its operation.

Bank ABC also piloted the region’s first high-value blockchain-based cross-border payment, in collaboration with JPMorgan and Aluminium Bahrain, under the leadership of the Central Bank of Bahrain. Leveraging its API interface, together with Onyx by JPMorgan’s JPM Coin System, the payment pilot was successfully concluded in January 2022. The transaction took a record 48 seconds to process and was conducted in US dollars.

In 2021, ABC Labs introduced additional market-first conversational-AI and emotional-detection capabilities to the digital assistant ‘Fatema’. It also expanded the assistant’s knowledge and language skills, and enhanced its natural human-like appearance. Fatema can now answer a broader range of questions in English and Arabic.

Western Europe — BBVA

This year, BBVA put improving the financial health of customers and clients at the heart of its overall digital and transformational strategy, helping the transition to a more sustainable economy. Currently, 44 million of BBVA’s customers use digital channels to do their banking; more than 66% do so through the mobile app; and seven out of 10 sales take place digitally.

In 2021, the bank launched a fully digital bank in Italy that aims to be a zero-commission everyday mobile bank. At the same time, BBVA Switzerland added ethereum to join bitcoin on its Swiss cryptocurrency custody and trading service subsidiary.

Moreover, the group launched New Gen, a 100% digital investment account that allows investing and combining traditional and digital financial assets in the same portfolio to new customer segments beyond private banking. This service can be accessed with an initial deposit of $10,000 (or its equivalent in euros or Swiss francs) and customers can start trading in less than 15 minutes thanks to a fully digital onboarding process.

In addition to the crypto offer, the new account grants access to a catalogue of companies and funds organised into 11 themes, including climate change and the circular economy, or by technologies with great disruptive potential, such as robotics, 3D printing or autonomous vehicles.

In Turkey, Garanti BBVA created Digital Gateway, an umbrella programme with a primary vision to position the mobile device as the first contact point for the customer and to remain at the centre of the customer experience. This vision is supported by an end-to-end seamless experience with do-it-yourself first support and human support when needed, using tools like a smart assistant, live chat and click to call/video call. The smart assistant Ugi was the first mobile voice assistant in the banking sector in Turkey.

“This award recognises our digital strategy, which focuses on enhancing service to our customers by making their lives easier and offering them support and new opportunities. We aim to leverage our technology model and our app to bring these benefits to our European customers. Our latest digital offering in Italy showcases this approach, for instance. We believe technology offers us major opportunities that we can transform into the best digital experience for our customers,” says Gonzalo Rodríguez, head of business development, BBVA Spain.

CATEGORIES

AI and machine learning

Winner: DBS Bank

Project Name: Singapore Consumer Banking Operations Data-Driven Detective Control

Partner: Singapore consumer banking operations risk and control team, and various operations departments within Singapore consumer banking operations

In the second-quarter of 2020, DBS Bank’s Singapore consumer banking operations (SG CBO) started experimenting with applying machine learning (ML) models to images of cheques, with the aim of significantly improving the accuracy of the verification process and reducing human errors with the end-to-end workflow.

Using deep learning models, Data-Driven Detective Control (DDDC) developed Cheque OCR to identify post-dated and outdated cheques, cheques without signatures and untallied amount in words and digits, which were previously manually verified by the employees. OCR allows for 100% cheque verification, which is not common practice for the industry. In 2021, 14,000 invalid cheques amounting to S$10.3m ($7.38m) were detected by OCR. This has reduced negative customer impact and financial exposure to DBS.

The success of this experiment led to a DDDC initiative in 2021. DDDC is an automated internal detective control that the analytics team leverages. After gathering data from various sources, it applies data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and ML to the data to provide algorithms and intelligence, and augments risk mitigation in everyday operations across key products and services within SG CBO.

DDDC combines structured and unstructured data across all available digital sources to provide more accurate and faster insights, allowing for more confident decisions to be made. This cuts down on time spent manually performing checks and reconciliation. DDDC transforms, enriches and applies AI and ML to multiple raw data from operations and 14 source systems, and converts them into 40 intelligent and meaningful reports with actionable insights. These insights serve as secondary checks for pre- and post-processing activities, offer reconciliation between multiple systems, and flag any errors or exceptions found.

With a mixture of data analytics, AI and ML, DDDC has enabled timely capture, and mitigation and monitoring of potential risks and errors.

SG CBO handles 314 processes, equivalent to 1400 different activities, across key consumer products and services. The sheer volume carries risk which can adversely impact the customer or the organisation. In every industry, detective controls are developed to reduce the risk exposure.

“This initiative has also improved the employee journey by reducing pain points involving manual checks and verification, enabling a data-driven culture within DBS. There are more than 300 processes in operations, and so far we’ve deployed DDDC to 20% of these processes, with plans to increase coverage of AI/ML to other processes,” says Rachel Dimapilis, data scientist, technology and operations at DBS Bank.

Cyber security

Winner: E.Sun Bank

Project Name: Intelligent E.Sun Fraud Prevent System

Growing convenience of payment services is met with increasingly complex fraud. Card-not-present frauds in Taiwan amounted to T$2.2bn ($73.6m) in 2018.

The Intelligent E.Sun Fraud Prevent System (iEFPS) is capable of managing different forms of payment. The bank developed a machine learning (ML) algorithm and model with nearly 400 transaction features and monitored abnormalities using the latest transaction data. 

“Through artificial intelligence (AI), ML and application programming interface technology empowerment, iEFPS enables each credit card transaction to be rated for risk within 0.1 second, realises human–robot collaboration to accurately prevent potential risks, and uses innovative applications of intelligent risk control to protect transaction security, reduce losses, help the business grow steadily and enhance customer experience,” says Sean Lin, senior executive vice-president of E.Sun’s credit card and payment division.

To prevent any downtime in transaction monitoring due to abnormal iEFPS function, the system has been designed with operation detection and back-up mechanisms. In the event of a new fraud pattern or a surge in suspicious fraud signs, the system may first perform detection using experience rules pre-configured by experts to stop fraudulent actions from escalating. At this point, the AI will begin gathering information and apply ML algorithms to find detection rules and logic, which keep the detection system’s core up-to-date on the latest trends.

E.Sun launched iEFPS in August 2019. Benefits include reducing the number of monitoring cases by 24%, increasing the accurate interceptions of fraudulent transactions by three times, and preventing the losses from fraud by T$438m, or an average of T$15m per month.

The bank implemented the iEFPS in August 2019 for fraud monitoring and to introduce a human-robot collaboration model. The model begins with manual data input and processes and is followed by adjustments based on robot-generated results, resulting in a collaboration model that further completes the E.Sun Fraud Prevention System so that better financial services can be offered to customers.

Currently, the AI can reject high-risk transactions outright; as for medium-risk transactions, the bank has plans to refine the AI so that transaction maintenance can be fully automated. Using robot call-outs and voice recognition technology, transactions of medium risk are directly referred to robocall for subsequent processes. Robocall technology uses customers’ basic information for identity verification, and voice data for comparison, eliminating the need for manual intervention.

Digital transformation

Winner: Banco Bradesco

Project Name: Lean Digital Transformation

Partner: CI&T, BCG, NTT

Bank Bradesco’s digital strategy and transformation centred on a cultural transformation to better understand customer needs, prototype, experiment solutions and deliver value in an agile way. The enterprise-wide cultural transformation initiative drives digital acceleration using agile methodologies, multidisciplinary teams, and minimum viable products, allowing quick responses to the customer’s needs, through lean methodology.

The transformation journey started in 2018, with the creation of agile teams called ‘villages’. The first villages were focused on high-income, mobile, customer relationship management (CRM) investments, which the bank calls ‘Ágora’, and credit offers, which the bank calls ‘Brain’.

This village model was intensified, expanded and consolidated with the creation of new villages, organised by an internal team called ‘Lean Office’. Bank Bradesco now runs 24 villages. More than 3500 employees and external collaborators are currently working in the villages, with 80% of the bank’s portfolio initiatives now delivered in agile releases.

The project has achieved the following results: development lead time was reduced, while increasing the rate of IT delivery. 

The CRM village saw a 102% increase in active interactions via digital channels and a 59% increase in the potential for interactions with customers. The Bradesco artificial intelligence (AI) village started out with a chatbot to answer common questions, and then moved to transactions via mobile, WhatsApp, Google Assistant and Alexa, and currently has 92 products and services available.

The Brain village oversaw the implementation of the complete credit cycle from concession, distribution and collection. The AI models started to decide 98.5% of the mass proposals, with a 41% reduction in delinquency.

The bank claims that the initiative promotes learning and development in new methodologies, incentives, new partnerships and the usage of new technologies. The digital transformation project supports its staff people in a more open, interactive and inclusive communication with continuous feedback.

“Bradesco realised that it would be necessary to transform the way we used to deliver solutions, with a cultural transformation to better understand the customer needs, prototype, experiment solutions and deliver value in an agile way,” says Edilson Dias dos Reis, chief information officer at Bradesco.

Financial wellness

Winner: Al-Amal Microfinance Bank

Project: Project to Support Youth Entrepreneurship and Financial Inclusion Project

Partners: EU, financer of financial services; Silatech, financer of non-financial services; Reyadah, implementer of non-financial services.

Due to the ongoing war in Yemen, many young people lost businesses, either due to economic deterioration or the devastation of cities experiencing armed conflict. They also lost an opportunity to get small grants for establishment of a small enterprise because financial institutions stopped lending amid increasing risk and complicated loan guarantees.

Related estimates revealed that of the total 1.9 million enterprises in Yemen, 94% are small enterprises and 4.5% medium-sized enterprises. Between March and August 2015, 26% of the companies were shut down by the war. Meanwhile, women-owned enterprises were less resilient, as 42% of them were shut down. Because of the conflict, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lost 75% of their clients in the service sector, 73% in the commercial sector and 69% in the manufacturing sector. In addition, larger companies announced a 60% loss of manpower, while profits of SMEs decreased by 79%. SMEs in commercial and service sectors were most impacted; they experienced a 44% and 43% loss, respectively.

Al-Amal Microfinance Bank’s (AMB’s) Project to Support Youth Entrepreneurship and Financial Inclusion is aimed at young adults aged 18–35. The project supports this demographic to overcome challenges, including poverty and unemployment, by means of establishing enterprises or recovering an enterprise impacted by the ongoing war in Yemen, via grants and training in how to manage their business.

During the first six months of the project, AMB developed procedures and policies related to the project, which included: grant mechanism, training mechanism and communication strategy. A total of 11,977 enterprises were established, worth €4.5m; 5007 young people were trained; and 42,775 new job opportunities were created. Forty percent of the beneficiaries of these grants were women.

The Covid-19 pandemic during the second year of the project (2019/20) represented a major challenge for the bank to continue the project during its specific timeframe. However, the bank automated all procedures related to the project, starting with digital grant application and ending with digital grant distribution. The bank continued to apply this mechanism until the intervention ended in December 2021.

Applying for grants is available via the AMB website and easily accessible via smartphones. Goods and assets are purchased online by using point-of-sale terminals rapid response symbols.

"The bank and its partners intend to extend the project and continue contributing to the stabilisation of the country. In its second phase, the project will expand to include three more governorates of Yemen and reach up to 16000 young entrepreneurs," says Mr Mohammed Al-Lai, CEO of Al-Amal Microfinance Bank.

Fintech partnership

Winner: BBVA

Project Name: Biometric Proof of Life for Pensioners

Partner: Veridas

In Mexico, pensioners must go to their bank branch twice a year to give proof of life for collecting their pensions. This process involved many hours of travel, which given the recent Covid-19 pandemic, meant putting lives at risk. To solve this problem, BBVA Mexico launched a biometric proof of life for pensioners, partnering with facial and voice biometrics provider Veridas.

“Working with Veridas, BBVA México managed to turn the entire life-certification process into a secure online procedure,” says Juan Francisco Losa, global head security architecture, BBVA.

“Pensioners are an especially sensitive group, particularly in times of pandemic, when they need ways to avoid having to travel to a branch to continue collecting their pensions. Since its launch in mid-2021, more than 100,000 customers have used our new system, with a very high rate of satisfaction.”

With a single call from any device, in any language and with just three seconds of their voice, pensioners can now provide proof of life from any place, at any time. Since June 2021, more than 85,000 pensioners have already registered in this system, allowing them to give proof of life remotely and avoid travelling to their branch. More than 110,000 remote proofs of life have been made so far. In July 2022, it is expected to reach 100,000 pensioners registered.

BBVA was looking for a solution that would support a variety of socioeconomic situations in Mexican society, regardless of whether or not they had an internet connection or a smartphone. The system needed to support the variety of languages, accents and dialects present in Mexico, as well as the demographic variables of their pensioner portfolio, in terms of age and gender.

The Veridas voice biometrics system offers three-second authentication (and enrolment), and it is language and text-independent, meaning the user can speak naturally without repeating a pre-defined sentence or memorising a password. Veridas’s biometric engine can tell whether a voice is genuine or, instead, is pre-recorded or synthetic, which is a critical element in preventing fraud.

Based on the success of the project in Mexico, the bank has now launched a voice authentication process in its contact centre in Spain, available to all the bank’s customers.

Investment banking

Winner: Credit Suisse

Project: Credit Suisse Investment Bank’s Codeless Technology, Cultural Site Reliability Engineering and AI Operations Transformation Project 

In 2020, Credit Suisse’s IT Application Support group initiated a multi-phase Codeless Technology, Cultural SRE Engineering and AI Operations Transformation Project to accelerate the technical upskilling of all employees.

The goal was to transition teams from being purely procedural support operators, spending all of their time on manually maintaining and ensuring reliable production systems, to upskilling towards the globally recognised cultural practice of site reliability engineering (SRE). This would transform all employees, who are not all specialist programmers, to an engineering mindset and become self-sufficient at identifying the right technology solutions to significantly reduce operational debt and toil through automation of the low-value and repetitive support tickets. The goal was to provide additional productivity capacity over time for teams to do more of the difficult higher-value tasks that require critical thinking, which engineers are employed to do.

The bank then embarked on implementing the SRE practice across its global employees without everyone initially having the required technical expertise to deliver the right automated solutions themselves.

“This project enabled an all-inclusive SRE mindset culture for Credit Suisse and accelerated the upskilling of our people to solution engineering in a faster, more practical and workable way than previous industry approaches. We empowered teams to now focus on engineering challenges versus manual operational tasks,” says Michael Jones, site reliability engineer, Credit Suisse.

A tooling discovery framework was implemented to help teams quickly identify and choose the right tools for each type of job, which helped accelerate the tooling adoption across the organisation. These technologies were socialised and evangelised through the set up of automation working groups and communities of practice with employees, helping to mentor and seed the cultural transformation deeper through the organisation. 

Because of this programme, 100% of the operations teams adopted one or more technologies in 2021, compared to just 10% in 2020 using coded solutions. At Credit Suisse, 65% of toil-type work was automated by the second quarter of 2022, versus just 10% in 2020. Highly optimised teams also supported an increase of 42% of operational demand in 2022 and increased team capacity onboarded over 40 more applications, at no extra cost, and the SRE contributed to a 28% improvement in production stability 2022 versus 2021.

Mobile

Winner: Hana Bank

Project Name: My Branch

Driven by the societal shift towards digital and behaviours accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, Hana Bank launched ‘My Branch’, a one-to-one virtual branch, accessible via mobile and run by tellers and managers at physical branches at the bank. This mobile access increased the number of branches accessible for customers to 8000.

The virtual My Branch branches are customised for each customer and communication is enabled with managers who are in customers’ neighbourhoods. The bank says the presence of local branch managers gives My Branch a ‘human touch’ that is different to the main banking application. The application not only offers personalised financial products, organised by branch managers for specific customers, but also presents a different layout and presentation tailored to each user.

Before introducing My Branch, Hana Bank claims it only had “one humdrum banking app” which displayed the same mobile banking screens, products and layouts to all customers. The ease of use of My Branch has added 150,000 new customers in a year for the Korean bank.

Not only do local branch managers manage the My Branch service, but they were also involved in its development. Development of the service started at Hana Bank’s headquarters, but further development was relocated to physical branches so the manager could take a more involved role in the development of My Branch.

Hana Bank organised its developing operation teams with IT resources to work with branch managers, many of whom are unfamiliar with IT development, to develop My Branch in real time.

Branch managers create a tailored branch for each customer, after which the manager can send the customised branch to the customers with their mobile business card. The customers can access My Branch easily in the mobile business card — removing the need to download an app.

The number of accumulated visitors to My Branch is now two million, and has acquired 160,000 customers, offering $1.6bn in personal loans. It accounts for 34.3% of personal credit loans and 18.2% of demand deposits at Hana Bank.

Hana Bank plans to promote the service with an ‘Everywhere you are, My Branch in your hand’ slogan to increase branches from 8000 to 15,000 in 2025. It is also preparing to upgrade the service to enhance the customer experience.

Open banking

Winner: Banco Nacional de Bolivia

Project Name: Open Banking BNB

Banco Nacional de Bolivia’s (BNB’s) Open Banking BNB project is aimed at integrating new financial and non-financial capabilities with technological and innovative products. Open to everyone from large companies to start-up companies in Bolivia, it seeks to increase the value of the platforms and digital solutions of all of its customers and business partners.

The bank classifies clients as ‘technological entrepreneurs’ rather than small or large enterprises. It works with companies in the telecommunication, aviation construction, food delivery and soft-drink bottling industries. It also offers services to companies that provide basic services in the main cities in Bolivia. These companies take advantage of BNB’s application programming interfaces (APIs) in treasury management, digital payment methods, credit simulators, economic indicators and geolocation of service points.

In addition, BNB integrates with payment gateways and other emerging fintech companies in Bolivia. Because of this, the bank’s technology provides more than 270 companies’ clients with digital payment methods. In 2022, BNB became the first bank to make APIs available to grant credit cards on a third-party platform in Bolivia.

Starting in 2017, BNB created an innovation centre to serve as an exclusive management centre dedicated to carrying out innovation projects and next generation technologies, which lead to the launch of BNB’s API market project in 2018.

By 2021, BNB realised many firsts: it was the first Bolivian bank to provide an exclusive alternative digital payment method, as well as the first bank to provide an open architecture for treasury management in Bolivia. 

The bank’s API platform surpassed 1000 active clients with direct and indirect integration in 2021.

With API’s opening doors to digital payment methods in the past 12 months, BNB has achieved a 504% growth in transactions and in 2021 achieved a 258% increase in revenues obtained from commissions compared to 2020. As a result of this architecture, the bank provides financial services to the largest car dealership in Bolivia.

“We are positioned as the bank with the largest offering of digital products through open banking in Bolivia. And was one of the first in the region under market evaluation criteria. We develop integration APIs and generate added value to both our customers and the bank’s business,” says Eduardo Mojica Ribera, vice-president of innovation and digital transformation at BNB.

Currently, BNB has a backlog of Open Banking BNB initiatives in different business areas of the bank.

Payments

Winner: CTBC Bank

Project Name: All-rounded Sustainable Aggregated Payment Platform

CTBC Bank’s All-rounded Sustainable Aggregated Payment (ASAP) platform is a card and mobile wallet binding, or association, service in Asia that integrates merchant payment methods with 24/7 uninterrupted online transaction authorisation services. This offers a streamlined, end-to-end payment journey for the bank’s customers and strategic partners.

This platform was driven by two difficulties merchants faced when planning digital payments: the limitations of binding cards as merchants operate both online and brick-and-mortar stores; and merchants having to upgrade point-of-sale (POS) systems multiple times to support different payment providers.

With CTBC Bank’s ASAP platform, merchants who are interested in building their own payment brand, as well as introducing other payment methods, can join the platform and develop their own customised payment solution.

After upgrading to the ASAP platform, the bank’s online-to-offline transaction volume in the first-quarter of 2022 came to T$3.9bn ($130.48m) — 117% year-on-year growth from the same period in 2021.

CTBC Bank’s payment solution transforms credit card information into a barcode or QR code for merchants to be shown in-app. After it is scanned by the POS terminal, CTBC Bank authenticates the information and authorises the transaction. This process could be applied to various mobile payments and retail channels, as long as the same token is sent by the merchant. Should the barcode or QR code be generated by other payment providers, the platform transfers it to partners to finish the transaction.

In terms of using POS terminals, CTBC Bank charges merchants an acquiring fee. With the ASAP platform, the bank also charges a transmission service fee to digital wallet providers, which is a new source of income.

In 2021, a new feature dubbed ‘Cloud Cashier’ was added to the system. This feature generates a one-time payment link, allowing merchants to receive payment even without a website shopping cart or POS system.

The auto and mobility industry is the largest industry sector connected to the ASAP platform because the industry has been busy digitising its services to meet consumer payment habits. This sector requires both brick-and-mortar and digital payment, and their business operation has little to no room for transaction interruption, according to the bank. 

Corporate Venture Capital Team of the Year — Elevator Ventures, Raiffeisen Bank International

In its organisational set-up and governance, Elevator Ventures resembles an industry-standard venture capital fund with the exemption of having only one limited partner — Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI).

To earn a financial return for the bank, Elevator Ventures’ strategy is to leverage the strong network of RBI and its subsidiary banks in 14 countries. This organisation offers the bank early access to fintech high performers. Key advantages Elevator offers portfolio companies are:

• The strong connections of RBI’s subsidiary banks in their markets (over 18 million retail banking customers).
• An international network of corporates, sales channel partners and representative offices around the globe.
• The expertise of colleagues in all banking areas and a unique know-how about market specifics, customer demands and regulation in central and eastern European markets.
• Access to infrastructure for further expansion.

Elevator Ventures invests in both business-to-business and business-to-customer business models for aiding growth. Growth is enabled either by collaboration with RBI, or by tapping the venture funds network of founders, media, investors, sales partners, industry experts and others.

The venture fund has invested in Kompany, an alumnus of RBI’s fintech partnership programme. RBI co-developed the enterprise solution with Kompany in a four-month pilot project. After the investment, Kompany expanded and won top-tier banks as clients in western Europe and the US. Last year, Moody’s Analytics acquired the business.

On the consumer side, Elevator Ventures invested in the Czech buy now, pay later (BNPL) provider Twisto, which was able to establish itself as a major BNPL provider in the Czech Republic and enter the Polish market. Last year, they exited to Australian BNPL giant Zip.co.

Elevator Ventures lists two unicorns, fintech companies valued at $1bn and above, in its portfolio via its Fintech Growth Fund Europe: Bitpanda and Wayflyer. RBI is in close contact with Bitpanda, and they are co-operating on the bank’s Pantos project, which is a multi-blockchain token system.

RBI’s senior management is represented in the investment committee — namely the group’s chief financial officer, head of group strategy, head of group subsidiaries and equity investments, head of payments and daily banking, and head of group capital markets corporates and retail sales. The investment committee offers relevant input and strategic guidance from all business areas of the bank.

"As the CVC arm of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), Elevator Ventures invests in companies that change the financial industry in the mid- to long-term. We support through collaboration with RBI and by tapping our own network of founders, media, investors, sales partners, industry experts and others. Besides generating financial return through exits such as Twisto, Kompany and FinCompare, we contribute to RBI’s innovation strategy with VC market insights and close ties to the best founders in the field," says Maximilian Schausberger, managing director of Elevator Ventures. 

CIO of the Year — Andrii Hrytseniuk, chief information officer, Alfa-Bank Ukraine

Andrii Hrytseniuk joined Alfa-Bank Ukraine in September 2020. In 2021, the bank launched a new personalised client experience — the Sense SuperApp digital bank, which has since gained more than 1.65 million users, realised record-breaking figures for digital loans and deposits, delivered 17 releases and added 52 new features.

In addition to the new digital app, Mr Hrytseniuk oversaw the rebuilding and update of the bank’s legacy core banking platforms, built clear, effective and close collaborations with strong digital partners, and built a development team to simultaneously work on many projects.

By 2022, the bank was ready to issue new products, ensuring the smooth operation of the Sense app, strengthening the co-operation with the leading digital partners of the country. At the end of February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, sparking a war that is still ongoing.

Under the leadership of Mr Hrytseniuk, Alfa-Bank saw such ‘hard times’ as a test of the infrastructure stability, as well as ability to migrate between cloud and on-premises data centres. It confirmed that the bank was ready to react to the circumstances that could affect its continuity and security, even during unprecedented cyber attacks in February 2022. It also showed the success of the CIO’s teamwork. Over two months of martial law, there have been six updates and a dozen new features introduced. Every fortnight, the team updates the digital bank with new products, offering new opportunities for Ukrainians in one mobile app.

“Innovations are still the priority of development, but we are focused not only on introducing new products, but also on helping each other and the economy. We were the first to integrate military bonds into a mobile app and to swiftly launch services to help the army and government’s humanitarian programmes,” says Mr Hrytseniuk.

“The bank was attacked: we have repelled tens of thousands of DDoS [cyber] attacks and are confident in the stability of our data storage. Ukraine was the first country to equalise digital passports with paper documents. IT here is a field of ‘creating sense’. Because any bank in a time of chaos can be either a point of stability or a cause of worry, the banking sector should be there for the people. And that will lead us to victory.”