Celent Model Bank Awards 2017: Banking Products Innovation
This is the next article in a weekly series highlighting trends and themes from Celent’s Model Bank submission process. For more information on how the Model Bank Awards have evolved, see the first two pieces from my colleagues, Dan Latimore and Zil Bareisis.
This week’s article focuses on Model Bank entries in the Products category. Part of the criteria for this category is that the solution needs to be in production and demonstrating business benefits. The Products entries for 2017 fall broadly into four sub-categories:
- Payments Product -- for launching the best consumer or business payments product.
- Lending Product -- for the most impressive consumer or business lending or collections initiative.
- Open Banking -- for the most impressive API strategy and results so far.
- Product Innovation -- for demonstrating the ability to launch multiple innovative products.
The majority of submissions in the Products category came from banks in developing markets, with only a handful from large global banks. The Model Bank award submissions came from Argentina, Germany, India, Korea, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, and USA.
The Products category submissions were impressive indeed:
Payments: The submissions in this area focused on modernizing existing banking and payments infrastructure. With consumer expectations growing for real-time transactions and unified information across channels, banks are layering new capabilities onto legacy frameworks. Capabilities include accelerated check clearing, enhanced mobile wallets, simplified fraud controls, and streamlined charitable donations.
Lending: Possibly threatened by alternative lenders, banks in this sub-category are improving the speed and convenience of loans for micro and small businesses. Some entries focused on expanding application channels, both digital and physical. New digital channels include SMS/text, ATM and Facebook. Physical channels include the local coffee shop. All of the submissions featured faster loan decisions through advanced analytics and paperless (or almost paperless) loan closings.
Open Banking: Open Banking APIs have moved beyond hackathons and proofs of concept to production implementations. While some banks are rolling out Open API development portals in response to regulations like PSD2, the Model Bank candidates in this category are using APIs to improve the customer experience. The submissions represented two approaches to Open Banking. The first is the use of open APIs to connect directly with customers and developers, enabling transactions including B2B payments, personal remittances, loan disbursements, and e-Commerce refunds. The second is the use of open APIs as the core foundation for digital-only banking models. Third-party developers then create value-added client-facing applications using the bank’s exposed API services.
Product Innovation: This sub-category features partnerships with both traditional financial technology and start-up Fintech firms to make banking more convenient, create new offerings, improve customer service, expand a bank’s digital footprint, and personalize marketing offers.
Want to hear more about the Celent Model Bank winners for payments product, lending product, open banking, and product innovation? Join us for the 10th annual Innovation and Insight Day on April 4th in Boston. In addition to revealing the winners of all the awards, Celent analysts examine the trends that are driving innovation in Banking. I look forward to seeing you there.