Gartner Announces Winners of the 2017 EMEA Eye on Innovation Awards

Gartner has announced the winners of the 2017 Gartner Eye on Innovation Awards for financial services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The awards recognize innovative use of technology-enabled capabilities to highlight "best in class" financial industry initiatives launched within the past 12 months, and to offer insight into developments in digital innovation. The finalists presented their case studies during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Barcelona and winners were selected by the audience.

The award for the Most Innovative Digital Business Model went to Absa Bank. The Bank wanted to help the 50 percent of people under the age of 30 in South Africa who are declined credit because they have insufficient credit history, despite the possibility of them having sufficient affordability. It has broken the boundaries that previously defined credit-lending practices by testing the viability of new social media data points as a viable data source, hence driving financial inclusion.

Using a new social media scoring model, Absa has found a way to provide alternative lending methods by making use of advanced analytic techniques to capture previously rejected and nontraditional customers. The finalists in that category were Standard Chartered and VKB Insurance.

In the Most Innovative Digital Customer Service or Product award winner is National Bank of Greece, also the overall regional winner. NBG won the prize for its solutions for younger customers. In April 2017, it sponsored Greece's largest youth music festival with the objective of turning the entire festival ticketless and cashless, while at the same time introducing a new product to the market that would appeal to the youth market. The two finalists were DenizBank and Emirates NBD Group.

Zurisch Insurance won the award in the Most Innovative Digital Cost-Saving Initiative category. The company sought to improve the inefficiencies around the handling of injury claims with a cognitive computing solution to fully automate the injury report assessment. Zurich leveraged AI to fully automate the medical report evaluation, so handlers could focus on more value-added activities. Software robots were also deployed to take over more simple tasks such as rekeying information or updating databases.

The combination of the cognitive solution and the software robots enabled Zurich to significantly improve the process productivity using AI, while ensuring that the quality in decision making was at least as good as in the old process. The remaining finalists in that category were Aksigorta and Mashreq Bank.

Award submissions were assessed using a robust and dynamic framework to ensure that the assessment process remained pertinent and objective. The Gartner Awards Framework (GAF) is utilized as a structured model of assessment that enables the participating organizations to be benchmarked against world-class performance standards. It consists of specialized assessment modules pertaining to the evaluation criteria for each of the award categories. The criteria and subcriteria provide a robust set of requirements that are used as the methodology for benchmarking and learning among the participating organizations.