The world’s best digital banks 2024: Global and regional winners – Magic Post

Banks are leveraging AI, APIs and agile technology to compete with fintech companies, enhancing customer experience.

The dynamism of digital banking continues to take hold, as banks ramp up transformation efforts to keep pace with rapid technological advancement. These developments help them meet customer expectations and compete with Big Tech and more agile FinTech companies, an ever-present threat.

At this year’s Sibos event, held in Beijing, there was a notable increase in the number of attendees from non-banking organizations – including fintech companies and payment service providers. There was also a panel discussion about wallet aggregators becoming Swift members. After non-banking institutions made hard efforts when banks were not prepared to do so, the reality of today’s banking scene confirms that it is no longer limited to banks alone.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to help drive efficiency, scale innovation, and personalize experiences in ways that give banks a competitive advantage and resonate with modern consumers. Artificial intelligence is not new; Banks have used it for credit scoring and fraud detection for many years. However, as AI technology continues to evolve, it is leading to more sophisticated and innovative applications in banking, leading to advanced models of personalized services.

(Below are the winners of the second round. The first round winners were announced in the September issue.)

Bank of Georgia (BOG), winner of the World’s Best Digital Bank Overall and Best Consumer Digital Bank, has gone to great lengths to tailor its solutions to specific customer needs through the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence. “We strive to deliver a customer-centric, straightforward and comprehensive user experience,” says Arshile Gatcheshiladze, CEO of the bank.

Like B.O.G., ispank, Which won the Best Mobile Banking App award among consumer digital banks, and provides superior app functionality. Executive Vice President Sezgin Lul says that 750,000 people have registered their cars on the İşCep app. “This means we know how old their car is and how many kilometers they have driven. We can tell them when they need their car serviced and ask them if they want to renew their car. The power of artificial intelligence enables us to suggest intelligent alerts.”

The AI ​​capabilities also help predict whether Isbank’s SME clients will achieve a cash surplus or cash deficit during a specific period over the next 12 months. “This means we can offer additional financing facilities or ask them if they want to use the surplus funds as an investment opportunity,” explains Loll.

TD BankNorth America’s top consumer digital bank, has championed the use of AI-powered “payments” within its app and is now using generative AI to speed up mortgage applications and code development.

Slovakia Tatra Bank It won the award for Best Adaptive Mobile Banking Site among Consumer Digital Banks, using machine learning for its spending plan, which includes a payment prediction service that uses prediction algorithms to enable it to warn users about recurring expenses, helping them better manage their cash flow between paychecks. Payments.

APIs that facilitate digitization

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are tools that enable more advanced capabilities. By listening to its customers, dpsWinner of numerous global and regional awards, it identifies and develops effective solutions to achieve specific goals and address specific problems or challenges. This helps drive business transformation across industries and is supported by APIs. With over 280 APIs, DBS has the most comprehensive corporate banking API library of any bank and has seen growth of over 61% year-on-year, with 386 million calls during 2023.

“We have really reimagined ourselves to move from product push to display use case – to truly embody ourselves in our customer journey,” says Tessie Matthew, Head of Cash Product Management Group, Global Transaction Services, at DBS. “This helps us really look at the task they need to do and what is the best way to do it.”

With DBS RAPID, customers have access to 180 highly standardized APIs to suit diverse needs – such as real-time processing (RTP) of payments, receivables and information inquiries. Whether it’s for ride-hailing companies where drivers want to get paid immediately rather than waiting a few days, or it’s for instant insurance claim payments, Matthew says DBS can seamlessly integrate itself into the process at any time to suit a client’s needs.

Over the past 12 months, Bank of Americawinner of the Best Integrated Consumer Banking Site award, saw a 51% increase in the number of customers using its application programming interfaces (APIs) via its CashPro digital banking platform. Businesses are looking to enjoy the benefits of faster transaction speeds. RTP systems bring benefits and challenges to banks and businesses as they strive to keep up with customer expectations for instant payments. APIs provide a way to do this; However, many companies must update their back-end systems first.

“One of our goals is to demystify the new payments landscape so customers can benefit from it,” says AJ McRae, head of global enterprise payments for Bank of America’s Global Transaction Services. “We work with our customers to evaluate how – using their existing infrastructure – they can use new solutions to solve their specific problems or goals.” When choosing the best payment paths, McRae says treasurers should not consider this question. “They just have to share their priorities, whether it’s cost or speed or something else. We’ll then take that information and target the payment appropriately.”

Architecture modernization

By building an on-premises digital cloud core banking platform, Santanderour best corporate/institutional digital bank in Western Europe, has enabled parallel processing of various banking operations. This will help Santander become fully digital, resulting in faster transaction processing, improved customer experience and increased operational efficiency.

Citywinner of the Best Corporate/Enterprise Digital Bank in North America, is also looking to technology to provide a cloud-first, microservices-based architecture. CitiDirect delivers all the capabilities of Citi’s treasury and trading solutions. Recent innovations include new advanced features, says Naveed Anwar, Head of Platforms and Data Services. “Our global reach extends to more than 90 countries, and our investments in digital experiences such as onboarding, self-service and search are on par with the best technology companies,” he says. “We also built Citi Token Services, embedded in CitiDirect, using distributed ledger technology and smart contracts. Citi has created a patented programmable payment and liquidity platform that will reduce costs and simplify operations.”

While it already boasts Nomo’s Sharia-compliant digital bank, Boubyan BankThe company, the best Islamic digital bank in the world and the Middle East, has partnered with Temenos to build an open, API-first cloud architecture. This structure will provide greater access to modern banking capabilities, with rich Islamic banking functions.

Collaboration with IBM to integrate hybrid cloud and AI solutions has helped Alinma Bank, Winner of the Best in Transformation award, for shifting from single-purpose applications to multi-purpose applications, spanning embedded and open financing models – enabling Saudi Bank to effectively distribute its services, become a digital ecosystem orchestrator, and match customer lifecycle journeys. Users are now able to manage multiple accounts and investments, shop and pay bills, and receive personalized offers, while Alinma enjoys increasing numbers of registered customers via digital channels: a 40% growth in digital transactions and a 75% increase in digital financial transactions.

For all of the winners, the key to providing advanced digital banking experiences lies in technological innovation, customer-focused design, and strong security measures. By adopting flexible methodologies and advanced technology architecture, banks can quickly adapt to changing customer needs and market dynamics and prove that they are more than just competitors to non-banking institutions. From artificial intelligence that enables banks to deliver personalized services at an unprecedented scale, to seamless user experiences created across channels via intuitive interfaces, banks have the tools to compete in a way that seemed unimaginable just a few years ago.

The expansion of open banking – which enables secure data exchange between banks, fintech companies and third-party service providers through APIs – will continue to allow banks to offer personalized financial services as they continue to reimagine the future of banking.