Many of us at Celent just came back from a busy and exciting week in Boston. Undoubtedly, the highlight was attending Celent's Innovation and Insight Day on April 4th, where we celebrated achievements of the Model Bank and Model Insurer award winners.

The rain and clouds couldn't obscure spectacular views from the State Room overlooking the Boston harbour. And they certainly didn't dampen the mood of nearly 300 attendees representing banks, insurers and technology vendors from at least 15 countries around the world.

Craig Weber, Celent CEO, opened the day by presenting compelling evidence that financial services are more important than many celebrities. He was followed by an insightful presentation from Andy Rear, chief executive of Munich Re Digital Partners. The programme then split into parallel Banking, Insurance and Wealth and Asset Management tracks before reconvening again to close with a series of debates between Celent analysts on three topics: Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and blockchain.

During the Banking track we presented Model Bank awards, and discussed the winning initiatives and why they stood out from all others. As regular readers of this blog know, this year we introduced specific named awards with only a single winner for each award. I would like to offer my personal congratulations to all of our Model Bank 2017 winners:

And of course, congratulations to Caixa Bank, our Model Bank of the Year 2017! The keynote presentation by Àngels Valls on how Caixa Bank has embraced digital was the highlight of the I&I Day for many of us in Banking - thank you! Finally, congratulations to Celent Model Insurer award recipients.

Each of the award winning initiatives is published as a case study and available to Celent research clients by following the links above. In addition, we also published an overall Model Bank 2017 report, which discusses how the Model Bank programme has changed over 10 years and reviews the content themes across all nominations in 2017.

We intend to run the Model Bank programme again later this year, so keep an eye on the announcements when the new submissions window opens. We have no doubt that you are all working on exciting things and hope that you will consider submitting your initiatives for 2018 awards. In the meantime, enjoy the case studies and let's celebrate the Model Bank winners of 2017!