Celent’s I&I Day 2018 Delivers on its Promise to Unleash the Potential of the Ecosystem
One of the things we are proud of at Celent is our position in the middle of the financial services ecosystem. We regularly engage with financial institutions, their technology and service providers, fintech disruptors, consultants, and investors, as we strive to learn from our interactions, offer advice, and make valuable connections. Each year, Celent’s Innovation and Insight (I&I) Day is the physical embodiment and culmination of these activities. The theme for this year’s event – “unleashing the potential of the ecosystem” – called this out explicitly, and I do think it delivered on its promise.
As financial institutions, including many award winners, and technology vendors filled the rooms at 60 State Street in Boston with its magnificent views, the conversations started flowing, and continued throughout the day. Craig Weber, Celent CEO, welcomed the crowd to the sold-out event and noted how things have changed over the years we’ve been running the Model FI programmes. While the FI continue to look for areas of improvement, there has been a discernible shift towards the focus on innovation, often of the disruptive nature. And there could not have been a better keynote speaker to follow that message than Todd Schofield, Worldwide Industry Lead, Financial Services at Apple, Inc. Todd asked us not to blog or tweet about his presentation, so I will only say that it certainly gave all of us who were there quite a bit of food for thought.
We then broke up into different streams to announce and present Model Bank, Model Insurer and the inaugural Model Wealth and Asset Manager awards. This year we presented 25 Model Bank awards, covering an incredible array of innovative initiatives by banks from all over the world. We were delighted to see that so many winners were able to make the trip to be there with us and celebrate their achievements – thank you!
As the stories of Model Bank winners demonstrate, there is a lot of innovation going on in banking and payments. Our recent report takes a tour around the key themes we observe, covering not just the winning initiatives, but all the Model Bank submissions, and should be the place to start for anyone who is interested in the state of innovation in banking and payments today. Celent research clients who wish to go deeper in any area can access all the individual award-winning case studies here. And we intend to publish our slides from the I&I Day in the next few days.
We were also delighted to announce Bank of America as our Model Bank of the Year, for the bank’s “efforts to break down silos and bring all of its resources to bear in the service of customer-centricity.” Aditya Bhasin, CIO, Head of Consumer Technology, Wealth Management Technology & Operations at Bank of America, delivered a fantastic keynote speech highlighting the depth and breadth of innovations being pursued and delivered by the bank.
A few of us discussed afterward that insurers as well wealth and asset management attendees would have found Aditya’s presentation just as fascinating. And I am sure bankers would have much to learn from other Model FIs of the Year. Clearly, something for us to consider as we plan the I&I Day agenda for next year!
The day closed with Celent analysts engaging in a series of provocative debates around the hottest topics of the day, such as APIs, fintech and AI. Finally, it was time to raise a glass of cocktail, while continuing to network with the peers in the ecosystem.
As we draw closure on the Model FI programmes for 2018, our thoughts are already turning to the next year. We plan to open the 2019 submissions window very shortly and keep it open until mid-November, so that the FIs have plenty of time to prepare and submit their nominations. Thank you to all who support our Model FI programmes, and we look forward to hearing from you soon again!