Cognotec RealStream Margin is a product developed and launched in 2006 to support banks and FX liquidity providers to participate and compete in the rapidly growing ‘retail’ FX markets. The firm invested $25m in research and development to develop the system, and the judges were impressed with the fact that this enables banks to compete in this rapidly growing market – about 2% of total FX trading today – through a low-cost online, real-time service.
Marketing Technology Innovation Winner:
Temenos with eMerge on T24
Temenos adapted its core banking solution, T24, to create a new platform, eMerge on T24. The new solution has been built to meet the specific requirements of the emerging markets and microfinancing, by offering a cut-down version of the total T24 product and creating a ‘bank in a box’ for the mass-market retail base in the emerging markets. The judges were impressed by the work Temenos performed on this in 2006 with K-Rep Bank in Kenya, which went live on eMerge in August 2006 after a five-month implementation cycle and supporting 170,000 customers through 16 branches.
“With 10 years’ experience in microfinance and established relationships with the World Bank, we have developed a deep understanding and long-standing commitment in this market,” says Temenos CEO Andreas Andreades. “Microbanks, by their nature, have to be able to offer community lending at the lowest cost, so adopting effective technology at an affordable price is a prerequisite for doing business. We’ve developed eMerge on T24 Model Bank principles to include a preconfigured product that enables fast, low-risk and highly cost-effective implementations in as little as six weeks.”
Internet Technology Innovation Winner:
CashTech Solutions with Transact Remit
Using J2EE technologies with SSL and PKI, CashTech Solutions India built an online remittance product, Transact Remit, that enables global cross-border remittance payments to be performed online. Transact Remit is hosted by a bank that wants to offer remittances to retail customers without the remitter necessarily having to hold an account with the bank for using the services. The judges were impressed by the fact that the product achieved significant take-up during 2006 and is being used by banks in India, the Philippines and the US on a white labelled basis.
Mobile Innovation Winner:
Monitise for its cross-channel network
Monitise has developed the first mobile banking network that is both cross-mobile and cross-bank, using the principles of the ATM network – as in one look and feel, regardless of the customer’s bank or mobile operator. The judges felt this had made the service simple and, as a result, it has a better chance of uptake, it is easy for banks to plug into and it uses the existing interbank channels.
Monitise CEO Alastair Lukies says: “2006 was the year that banking really woke up to mobile. Previous attempts at introducing mobile banking services had taken a single bank to single operator model, with the expectation that consumers would change one buying relationship on the basis of another. The Monitise model, which has been adopted by our partners in the UK, US and Asia, is based on an ‘ecosystem’ in which multiple banks and mobile operators collaborate to deliver a single, consumer-orientated service, much the same principle as the global ATM estate.
“Over the coming year, new Monitise ecosystems will open worldwide and, in existing markets, the addition of new services, for example, the ‘topping up’ of transport smart cards and other pre-pay accounts, as well as the introduction of new banking functionality, such as bill-payment and inter-account transfer.”
Customer Experience Innovation Winner:
Qm Group Ltd with Matchmaker
Qm provides technologies to improve customer experience in branches through patented algorithmic software that dynamically applies average wait times for non-counter transactions, as well as effective staff management systems. The system is proven through its take-up in more than 100 of the busiest branches of HSBC, where customers are matched to the most effective staff member available to service their queries and to proactive marketing services while they wait. The judges felt this to be anin-branch system that would improve a bank’s overall ability to meet, greet and service branch customers in the long term.
“Qm has provided queue management solutions to the banking sector for many years and we’ve developed a system that addresses and solves a number of hard commercial issues faced by the retail banking sector,” says Michael Klincke, Qm Group’s chairman and CEO. “We believe that the Matchmaker solution’s ability to help reduce queues, increase sales and productivity while helping banks to ensure compliance have really put the product in a category of one.
“HSBC has led the way in adopting our product, and I believe that a growing number of organisations in the year ahead will recognise the benefits of the approach we have developed.”
