OVERVIEW

Celent Model Bank is awarded for best practices of technology usage in different areas critical to success in banking, and is the main award that a financial institution (FI) can receive from Celent. It is an annual program celebrating its 19th anniversary in 2025.

Submissions for our 2025 program are now open and will close on January 17, 2025.

We will announce our Model Bank winners at our flagship Innovation & Insight event on June 18, 2025.

Please be sure to read our FAQs carefully before submitting your nomination. Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to modelbank@celent.com.

NOMINATION CATEGORIES AND WINNERS

We are looking for initiatives across all areas of banking, from improving customer experience to transforming legacy, and from new product ideas to innovations in operations. While we welcome nominations based on a diversity of initiatives, we anticipate many to align with these areas across retail and commercial banking:

• Digital customer engagement
• Operations efficiency
• Risk and fraud management
• Product innovation
• Ecosystem and business model innovation
• Technology infrastructure modernization
• Data and analytics
• Future of work
• Commerce and channel innovation
• Payments innovation

Essential information:

• The nomination must be submitted by a Financial Institution (e.g. bank, credit union, card issuer, etc.). We welcome technology vendors to encourage their FI clients to participate, but vendors themselves are not eligible for an award.
• All nominations must be submitted online. A nomination worksheet is linked to the right. Some institutions appreciate a static document for internal collaboration.
• The FIs are welcome to submit multiple nominations, but they must be substantively different. Do not submit the same initiative more than once.
• There is no fee to submit the nominations and nominating institutions need not be a Celent client.
• We plan to recognize one institution as the overall Model Bank of the Year and up to 25 winners of specific awards. We reserve the right to change the number and categories of awards. The FIs do not have to specify which award they are applying for.
• We judge the initiatives on three evaluation criteria: demonstrable business benefits, degree of innovation, and technology or implementation excellence.
• Celent will work with each winner to publish a case study of their winning initiative, which will be available for Celent Banking research subscription clients. The FI will have the opportunity to review and approve the draft before publication. For an example case study, click on the link to the right.
• For more information, please review our extensive FAQ section. If you still have any questions, please contact us at modelbank@celent.com.

INNOVATION & INSIGHT DAY 2024

Interested in learning more about the program?

Visit our I&I Day 2024 hub page where you can watch interviews with last year's winners, hear from our team on the key trends and themes from the 2024 program, and watch our fireside chat between Zilvinas Bareisis, Head of Retail Banking and Payments, and Chunka Mui. They discuss many topics, from AI to climate change to trust, and how financial institutions can embrace, navigate, and shape the changing world.

Plus, dive deeper into our 2024 Model Bank winners to see how you can stand out in this year's program.