With so many nominations, our Model Bank awards programme gives us an unparalleled insight into the innovation taking place in the industry. We review the content themes dominating the submissions, and, of course, the winners of Model Bank 2018.
2018 set an all-time record again, with more than 170 nominations competing for Celent Model Bank awards. Such a number of high-quality initiatives gives us an unparalleled insight into the innovation taking place in the industry. We review the content themes dominating the submissions, and, of course, the winners of Model Bank 2018.
Last year we introduced specifically named awards with only a single winner for each award. We decided to continue with this approach this year, but increased the number of awards from 21 to 25, recognizing the diversity, quantity, and quality of nominations. Some of the awards remained the same, while others have changed slightly, reflecting the priority themes for the industry. Of course, we also have Model Bank of the Year, our crown jewel award, first introduced in 2012, which recognizes one financial institution that in any given year simply stands out from the crowd and uniformly impresses Celent judges.
The specific awards map reasonably well to the nomination categories (see the chart). Therefore, we believe these categories represent a good structure to discuss the content themes prevalent across all submissions and highlight the winning initiatives. Due to the number of initiatives related to Payments, we also discuss that topic separately.
Delivering an outstanding customer experience is the highest priority in banking. AI and APIs are hot. We also received a record number of submissions about account opening and onboarding.
