Bank of America is Celent's Model Bank of the Year
Celent has awarded its 2018 Model Bank of the Year to Bank of America for its efforts to break down silos and bring all of its resources to bear in the service of customer-centricity. Six initiatives demonstrate how the bank has executed on this challenge.
Incumbent banks around the world are facing fundamental challenges to their core businesses. Customers have an increased voice, new entrants are providing different solutions that are better, faster, or cheaper than those offered by many incumbents, and some question whether the largest banks are “too big to manage.” Bank of America has faced these challenges head-on and is mobilizing its significant resources to address them in a proactive, strategic, and coordinated way. All banks would do well to emulate BofA as it evolves toward a digital and customer-driven world.
Bank of America, one of the big four US retail banks, has demonstrated that size, while sometimes a hindrance in innovating quickly, is not a definitive roadblock to developing new and useful products and services driven by technology. Size can, in fact, be an advantage, particularly when it comes to the amount of resources available to enhance digital products.
These six initiatives are just a representative sample of the innovation occurring across Bank of America. Notable solutions not submitted but nevertheless worthy of attention include Erica, its AI-powered “financial assistant” (comparable to a chatbot); expansions of options for its mobile wallet; collaborative global digital disbursements; launching an API developer gateway; a consumer-oriented auto-buying assistance program; and an enhanced virtual payables solution.
