European Banks Dominate Efma Accenture Innovation Awards

European banks, led by Poland's mBank, earned most of the annual awards for banking innovation in marketing and distribution presented by Accenture and Efma.

The retail banking industry seems to be looking to Europe for the newest marketing innovations, as European banks captured most of the honors in this year’s Efma and Accenture Global Distribution and Marketing Awards for financial services. The awards recognize innovative ideas in the global retail banking industry, and are voted on by a panel of senior bankers and members of Efma, a retail banking association with more than 3,300 member institutions. More than 600 case studies were submitted for the awards from more than 250 banks in 69 different countries, according to a statement announcing the award winners.

Poland’s mBank led the award winners, capturing three of the top honors. It won the Most Disruptive Idea category for its mDeals solution, a merchant-funded transactional marketing platform that combines banking rewards, automatic redemption on card transactions, and behavior-based offers. The mDeals solution also won for the best innovation in Everyday Banking. mBank was also recognized in the Most Promising Idea category for its fast online loan underwriting service that can deliver a credit decision in less than 30 seconds and instantly deposit funds in the recipient’s account.

Barclays earned the Sales Effectiveness award for its Digital Eagles initiative to increase knowledge of its customer-facing digital solutions among its staff. La Caixa Bank of Spain won the award for Global Bank Innovator, given to a bank that has shown unique commitment to its innovation vision. And Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo Bank won the Customer Analytics and Big Data award for its customer management tool for customers that have multiple banks, which aims to increase the bank’s wallet share through behavior-based offers.

Umpqua Bank was the only North American bank honored, earning the award for innovation in Physical Distribution for the technology and design used in its San Francisco flagship branch. Three Asian banks won awards, including Kotak Mahindra Bank in India, which won the Best New Product category for its Jifi social bank account that is seamlessly integrated with Facebook and Twitter.

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio