SMEs, consumers to benefit as banks ramp up on innovation

Small businesses and bank customers now have more innovative choices for banking. Selected financial institutions in the Asia Pacific region received Financial Insights Innovation Awards (FIIA) at the Asian Financial Services (AFS) Congress 2014 in Singapore in late February in recognition of their innovation and creativity in fulfilling business objectives:

AllianceBank Malaysia is Asia's Most Customer Friendly Bank for its BizSmart Academy initiative. The Academy combines business education, coaching and seed funding to young SMEs and reaches out to both existing customers and the wider business community. 

The bank offers business education and training to customers through a structured year-long curriculum covering various management, business and finance topics, and also backs an annual SME Innovation Challenge through which high potential SMEs benefit from a two-month training and coaching programme, after which one winner receives RM250,000 to implement their business ideas. 

The Academy also features an online resource of tools and information for entrepreneurs.

Alliance Bank picked up Asia's Best Online Banking award as well for a customer-centric Online Banking solution for the business segment, along with other innovative products such as the Picture Business Credit Card and value-added propositions in the form of business education for SMEs and collaboration platforms.
 

CIMBBank has Asia's Best Payments & Remittance Service

OctoSend via CIMB Clicks service was launched on 23 August 2013 in Malaysia. This feature allows the bank’s customers to send money to anyone using only their mobile number or email address, taking away the hassle of remembering lengthy bank account numbers. This service can be accessed online, via the CIMB Clicks App and through OctoPay, the bank’s Facebook banking application.

Asia's Leader in Smart Banking is Cathay United Bank

Cathay United Bank's Agile Marketing Transformation programme is geared towards enabling more relevant relationship marketing initiatives more quickly. It uses predictive modelling to better align the right product to the right customer, adds greater automation, and leverages on analytics-backed enrichment of new customer data.

DBSBank received the Asia's Best Branch Banking award

Transformed DBS branches deliver an easy and convenient banking experience for its customers that is enriching, educational and entertaining through breakthrough banking infrastructure and technology.

DBS (Hong Kong) Bank, a branch of DBS Bank, provides Asia's Best Mobile Banking

DBS mobile app advertised in Singapore

At DBS Hong Kong, the DBS Online Loans Centre offers automated online straight-through loan application processing, where consumers can use either a desktop computer or smartphone to complete their application and obtain results within minutes, thereby saving time and providing added convenience for consumers.

The annual FIIA by IDC Financial Insights are given to top Asia Pacific financial institutions that have demonstrated innovation and creative thinking in the areas of customer engagement, product development, process reengineering or risk management to fulfill their business goals.