Gartner, Inc. has announced the winners of the 2019 Gartner Eye on Innovation Award for financial services in the EMEA region. The award recognizes innovative use of digital-technology-enabled capabilities, products or services to highlight “best-in-class” financial industry initiatives launched within the past 12 months and to offer insight about developments in digital innovation.
The finalists presented their case studies during Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, which is taking place here through Thursday, and Caser Seguros was selected as the regional 2019 Gartner Eye on Innovation Award EMEA winner by the attendees at the event. Aksigorta and Mashreq Bank were also named as winners.
Regional Winner:
Caser Seguros — One of motorcyclists’ greatest concerns is that they will have an accident on solo journeys, where they are unable to call for help and are left without assistance for too long. Recent studies have confirmed that a quick response saves many lives. Caser Seguros worked with a Spanish startup to design an innovative device based on the Internet of Things (IoT). Inspired by a feature in Jet Skis, the device stops the motorcycle is the rider falls off. The device connects to the Caser ReMoto mobile app, and using Bluetooth and activated localization, it links to the vehicle and driver. Should an accident occur, it emits an emergency signal to a rescue team, which then contacts the driver. If the driver does not respond to the call, an emergency ambulance is sent directly to the motorcyclist’s location. The launch of this insurance program has increased sales by 13%.
Additional Award Recipients:
Aksigorta — Aksigorta identified an opportunity to use digital twin technology to adapt and improve business processes. The company created digital copies of business processes in a virtual platform called Digital Mirror. Digital Mirror allows the processes to be measurable and have end-to-end visibility while providing granular and better insights from customers and agencies, based on data and statistics rather than traditional measures, such as subjective evaluations or assumptions. Digital Mirror helped identify critical pain points and improve processes and experiences by providing insight allowing Aksigorta to redesign 36 processes and reorganize its Operation Center in six months.
Mashreq Bank — Mashreq has developed a real-time payment tracing solution (The Payments Tracker) that enables self-service payment status queries where “intelligent agents” noninvasively trace payments across multiple sources often with different identifiers to provide a plain English update on the precise progress of the payment. Since the launch of The Payments Tracker, customer service calls have plummeted, and Tracker adoption has increased as customers obtain transaction transparency. Available to customers, customer service, relationship managers and investigation staff, most queries are solved within six seconds, representing an 80 times improvement on manual queries.
Finalists:
CaixaBank — In June of 2018, CaixaBank Digital Business conducted in-depth research to understand the main pain points for the ATM customer journey and analyze how technology could help improve the customer experience. Through this research, CaixaBank identified an opportunity for customers to use facial recognition biometrics to withdraw money. The registration process is done in a CaixaBank “store” branch, where a manager registers the biometric coordinates of the client and the whole process takes less than one minute. The client can immediately withdraw money from the ATM without using their PIN, making the process easier and safer. The program kicked off in February 2019, and by the end of May, more than 1,700 customers had signed up. By the end of April, there were more than 2,600 withdrawals using facial recognition, which is 9% of the total withdrawals in the 16 ATMs involved in the program.
Cattolica Assicurazioni — Cattolica Assicurazioni has focused on evolving its business paradigm from claims and reimbursement to prevention and protection, combining insurance coverage with connected services to create an ecosystem of property solutions. On the connected-property side, Cattolica Assicurazioni radically revolutionized its insurance product — Active Casa&Persona — via a partnership with a leading smart home and security solution provider, to prevent the risk and lower the possible damage from theft, water and fire. This innovation should enable Cattolica to lower the risk exposure, collect and analyze data to personalize the product and better price the real risk, and keep the property and the people who live in it more secure. This represents a first step in the Cattolica Group’s connected-home insurance products roadmap.
Eurobank Ergasias — Eurobank’s v-Banking is a service channel that combines the directness of personalized contact and business counseling, via interactive video communication and transactional service by a dedicated relationship manager. This innovative service, unique at the European level, modernizes banking through cutting-edge technology solutions and advanced platform functionalities.
The client has at his disposal his dedicated relationship manager as often as is desired. This is achieved through an exclusive assignment, which strengthens the individualized relationship of trust that both parties seek. V-Banking revolutionizes banking operations. Instead of requiring a customer to go to a physical bank to be serviced by a relationship manager, the bank comes to the customer with a simple touch of a button, and the customer can carry out all banking operations/transactions (nonmonetary) from any location.
FNB (FirstRand Life Assurance) — The standard practice of claiming from an insurer is always client-initiated. The claim is thereafter assessed before being paid out. This process creates unnecessary waiting time during a difficult period in the client’s life. Claims Excellence using Home Affairs data is a two-part solution to the problem. The first part uses a straight-through processing tool to significantly decrease waiting times for clients. Using a rules engine that encompasses client data, policy information and fraud data, a claim is assessed. If no red flags are raised, the claim is immediately paid out. With this solution, approximately 35% of claims are paid out instantly. The second part of this innovation is that FNB now can initiate claims on behalf of clients. FNB runs its base through Home Affairs (the national government organization that records births and deaths) to check for deaths to initiate claims on behalf of beneficiaries who weren't aware that a policy existed. This, in the long run, leads to capital efficiency and reserve releases.
National Bank of Oman — National Bank of Oman (NBO) created the NBO Marketplace, a platform that enables retail customers to gain deals, offers and discounts using their cards through the bank’s mobile banking app. NBO corporates can also instantly reach retail customers by publishing their offers in real time. NBO Marketplace is fitted with a geolocater function that provides customers with location-based deals, real-time tailored offers, security alerts, and loyalty program (Nuqati) point redemption, in addition to offering easy payment plans. Since July 2018, NBO has seen an increase of 38% in active users, a 47% increase in digital transactions and a 16% increase in merchant acquisitions.
Standard Chartered Bank — With more than 1,200 branches across 70 countries, it’s critical for Group Operations (COO) at Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) to be empowered with the data and insights needed to support customers and run an effective business. However, the bank business intelligence (BI) tool in use was too complex for the average user to do his own analysis. When a new question came up, operation managers had to put in a request to an analyst and then wait — sometimes up to two weeks—for an updated report. To solve this problem, SCB launched COOgle (COO Google Search), an advanced natural language processing (NLP) capability integrated with the bank’s data lakes. With COOgle, business users can access and analyze data from multiple different sources including trade data, financial data and client data, as well as ask questions and receive instant answers. Within the first two months of the launch of COOgle, client experience within SCB improved 11%. Additionally, operational efficiency has increased by 18% as most of the time and resources spent to identify and understand the root cause of an issue has been drastically reduced with COOgle.
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