Celent Model Bank 2017 Awards: The Payments Preview

This is the next instalment of our Model Banking preview blogs, and it’ll come as no surprise that I will focus on Payments.

Reading and evaluating the Model Bank entries is always fascinating. It’s also somewhat frustrating too at times – payments, covering so much territory, often ends up with the tricky task of comparing two very different projects, and trying to decide which is best. This year was no different, with the quality of entries high.

Until we announce all winners publicly on April 4 at our 2017 Innovation & Insight Day in Boston, we’re unable to say too much more – very frustrating! In addition to presenting the award to the winners, we will be discussing broader trends we’ve seen across all nominations and will share our perspectives why we chose those particular initiatives as winners. Unfortunately though, if you’ve not already registered, it’s too late. As with every year, it’s not only sold out, there is a growing wait list too!

So until April 4^th, what can we take away from the Payment entries as a whole this year?

First, the entries this year reinforce how hard it is for any single bank to come up with a cutting edge product innovation in payments. As a result, we had a number of entries submitted jointly by multiple FIs describing their initiatives on blockchain, P2P infrastructures, and other collaborative efforts.

We also saw, particularly in the retail space, the adoption of innovations in one market, transposed from another. There were a number of these, particularly in wallets and P2P. Not bad, just not new and often with a very specific market context. For example, one technology had been in place in a different country for at least 5 years, yet the impact will be huge for the bank who submitted it, and is leading edge for their market.

This perhaps serves as a timely reminder that innovation isn’t always about cutting edge technology, but doing something different. Scanning other markets for what they do, and why, is a great source of new ideas, Given that these innovations are, by definition, tried, tested and live, it also has the benefit of being easier to adopt, from the likely business benefits to the actual technology used and lessons learnt.

The second theme is the continued payments back-office renovation story, particularly around the adoption of payment services hubs, which continue apace. Whilst we have defined what is or isn’t a hub, we have always been clear that no two hub projects are exactly the same, and the entries this year reinforce that.

A few things really stood out in particular about the entries. First, some clients still consider hubs to be mainly European, yet we had entries from right around the globe. Second, whilst the details may differ, common to all was the belief that the bank had to re-engineer payments, not just for the future, but to better respond to changes that were imminent. Given the change in the last 10 years, and the likely change in the next 10, perhaps the question for many banks is more about when than if they also undergo their own transformation.

Look out for the case studies being published on April 4^th for more detail!