Last week many of us at Celent were in New York attending our Innovation and Insight Day on April 13th. It is Celent's flagship event during which we announce Model Bank and Model Insurer winners and celebrate their achievements. In addition, the program includes keynote speeches from industry leaders and Celent analysts, plenty of opportunities to network with peers, and even to experience some of the latest technologies first hand, courtesy of our sponsors.

The theme of this year's event was "Financial Services Reborn", and the Museum of American Finance on Wall Street provided an inspiring setting to celebrate innovation in financial services. Craig Weber, Celent CEO, kicked off the proceedings drawing insightful parallels between the battle of Alamo and the future of financial services. It must have been the first time in Craig's career that he had to come up on stage to the soundtrack of hip hop music, an extract from the Broadway musical "Hamilton", but it set the tone for the rest of the day - to expect the unexpected and to be open to new ideas.

Both of our guest speakers - Nadeem Shaikh, Co-Founder and CEO of Anthemis Group, and Leanne Kemp, Founder and CEO of Everledger - thrilled the audience and opened everyone's eyes to the opportunities presented by Fintech and Blockchain respectively, while our colleague Will Trout spoke eloquently about consumer-led convergence. A big 'thank you' to all the speakers, as well as the sponsors supporting the event!

The rest of the day was all about celebrating the achievements of Model Bank and Model Insurance award winners. As many of this blog's readers know, the vision for Celent’s Model Bank research, now in its ninth year, is to spotlight effective uses of technology in banking. This year we received a record number of submissions - well over 100 - that came from all over the world; the nominations were spread equally between North America, EMEA and APAC. The award winners come from four continents and nine countries and range from credit unions and microfinance institutions to the world's largest banks.

Celent Model Bank 2016 winners are:

As always, we published a series of reports with detailed case studies of all winning initiatives. Celent research subscription clients can access the Model Bank of the Year and individual category reports via our website.

This year we also introduced a new award, Model Bank Vendor. We wanted to acknowledge the vendor role in helping multiple clients achieve technology or implementation excellence, one of our judging criteria, and to extend our appreciation to the entire vendor community, which is instrumental in the ongoing success of the Model Bank program. Celent recognized two companies as Model Bank Vendors for 2016:

• EdgeVerve Systems
• Nucleus Software

Congratulations to all our award winners! We are grateful to have been exposed to so many extraordinary initiatives and the talented individuals responsible for their success. We look forward to continuing with the Model Bank program next year to identify and award the most impressive banking technology initiatives from around the world, and will begin accepting nominations again in September - stay tuned!