Introducing Celent Model Bank 2017 Awards
23 January 2017
As my colleague Dan Latimore wrote in the article that began this series, 2017 was the best ever year so far for Celent Model Bank programme in terms of quantity, quality and diversity of nominations. As we went through the judging process, we felt a range of emotions – grateful and privileged to receive so many amazing stories, and daunted by the prospect of having to pick the most worthy award recipients. In the end, we are excited and confident about our selection of winners, yet we are sorry that we could not recognize so many others that clearly also deserve recognition. Over its ten years of existence, Celent’s Model Bank programme has always changed and evolved. In the last few years we have been awarding multiple initiatives in a small number of categories – for example, last year we had four winners in Digital Banking Transformation, the busiest of seven categories. While all the awards within the category were equal, we knew that some institutions craved for more exclusive recognition. This year, we decided to take it a step further and to introduce specific named awards with only a single winner for each award. After long deliberations, the judging panel decided to recognise 21 initiatives as winners of the following Model Bank 2017 awards:
- Consumer Digital Platform – for delivering an outstanding digital experience for consumers. The award is open for traditional financial institutions, digital-first, and challenger banks.
- Small Business Digital Platform – for delivering an outstanding digital experience for small businesses.
- Corporate Banking Digital Platform – for delivering an outstanding digital experience for corporate clients.
- Consumer Banking Channel Innovation – for the most creative use of consumer channels, or the most effective channel integration.
- Branch Transformation – for the most compelling branch transformation initiative, including branch format innovations and creative use of live agents.
- Product Innovation – for demonstrating the ability to launch multiple innovative products.
- Open Banking – for the most impressive API strategy and results so far.
- Payments Product – for launching the best consumer or business payments product.
- Lending Product – for the most impressive consumer or business lending or collections initiative.
- Fraud Management and Cybersecurity – for the most creative and effective approach to fraud management or cybersecurity.
- Risk Management – for the most impressive initiative to improve enterprise risk management.
- Process Automation – for the most effective deployment of technology to automate business processes or decision-making.
- Employee Productivity – for improving employee training or collaboration, incentivising employees, or enabling mobile agents.
- Payments Replatforming – for the most impressive project to improve payments back office, e.g. payment services hub implementation or cards replatforming.
- Core Banking Transformation – for the most compelling initiative to transform a traditional core banking platform.
- Banking in the Cloud – for innovative approaches to implement a banking platform, e.g. deploying in the cloud.
- Banking as a Platform – for creating an ecosystem of partners via a banking platform that connects and enables third parties.
- Emerging Technology for Consumers – for creative deployment of emerging technologies for consumers (e.g. AI, ML, API, biometrics, wearables, voice, blockchain, etc.)
- Emerging Technology for Businesses – for creative deployment of emerging technologies for small business or corporate clients (e.g. AI, ML, API, biometrics, wearables, voice, blockchain, etc.)
- Most Promising Proof-of-Concept – for the most promising experiment – pilot or proof-of-concept – with emerging technologies.
- Financial Inclusion – for efforts to bring financial services to unbanked and under-banker communities.