Tech consultant Juniper Research predicts that banks’ spending on genAI will rocket to $85 billion in 2030, up from $6 billion this year, as the firms push to offer a more personalized user experience. But a key lesson of the blockchain bandwagon is that innovation for the sake of it is unlikely to succeed, whereas innovation that solves problems or provides a better user experience has value.

Among the past year’s innovations that appear to be yielding the best results are systems that solve cash-flow and liquidity-management problems, improve supply chain efficiency, and furnish a more seamless way for treasurers to carry out their daily operations. All of these deliver real value to their banking partners.

Similarly, our respondents singled out innovations that offer greater protection against fraud, increase stability and performance, and improve support for small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), citing the additional value they provide.

Some hyperpersonalized app enhancements underscore how far banks have come in tailoring their services to match customer journeys, many of them leveraging AI and machine learning to provide personalized recommendations in real time. From apps tailored to different age ranges to wealth management and financial advisory tools providing customized advice and investment guides, all promise to help banks strengthen their client relationships    —Gilly Wright

Our initial call attracted entries from innovators touting their achievements at the global, regional and local levels. Global Finance also received nominations for the top innovations of the year from correspondents and external sources. To accommodate invention, we do not set categories but insist that nominations be a “first” in some way. The editorial board evaluated entries, and nominations were vetted with independent research. Winners were selected following rigorous debate.

While geopolitical tensions, rising oil prices and financial stress are being felt globally, financial institutions understand that innovation during tough times isn’t just about survival but about positioning for future success. Challenges often reveal new problems to solve, demanding increased focus on finding innovative ways to improve efficiencies. Customers’ changing needs also require a response identifying and addressing these evolving needs. The 2024 Best Innovations alumni have developed problem-solving solutions using existing and cutting-edge technologies to push ahead with new ways to improve user experience and meet future challenges, whether to solve a problem, address a need, or create more value.

Brazil’s Banco Bradesco is using the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution to understand central bank communications better. Its new generative AI tool analyzes and summarizes the minutes and announcements from the Monetary Policy Committee of Brazil’s central bank and the Federal Open Market Committee of the US Federal Reserve. It generates detailed visualizations like time-series graphs almost immediately. Other features include a “Hawk/Dove indicator,” which provides a simplified representation of the direction of the Central Bank of Brazil’s monetary policy.

Bradesco’s resource managers are the tool’s main users. The bank believes it creates analyses and summaries that are faster and more bias-free than traditional analyses. Its use could lead to revenue gains of as high as 4.2 million Brazilian reais (about $818,000) annually, Bradesco projects.       

Helplines have existed for decades. In Central and Eastern Europe, they are often used in the farming sector, where users can ask questions of agricultural engineers. However, providing live experts to answer questions requires expense and time. Users sometimes have to wait hours, even days, for an answer.

Turkey’s DenizBank solved this problem by integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT services via application programming interface (API) to enhance the efficiency of its “Ask an Engineer” offering. Launched in March 2024, the chatbot is dynamic, meaning it improves the more it is used.     

In Kazakhstan, would-be homeowners often engage in shared-equity construction, a process in which future owners buy shares in a house under construction. One shortcoming is that the actual use of funds isn’t always straightforward.

Eurasian Bank’s AI-based tool allows real-time automated and transparent monitoring of shareholders’ funds during housing construction. This mitigates fraud and discourages inflated costs. Forecast analytics are used to vet changes in the timing of construction and installation work, and the protocol ensures all necessary documents are accessed during the construction process. 

Kapital Bank has been leading the charge in Azerbaijan’s digital transformation, where 50% of its loan sales are now online. Its secret sauce has been facial recognition software spiced with AI chatbots and a new online scoring model that can verify a customer’s identity and assess whether they are qualified for a loan. The service is available 24/7, and a borrower never has to visit a physical branch.

The crypto- and digital-asset market is filled with friction and security risks. However, in 2023, BBVA in Switzerland became the first Tier-1 eurozone bank to provide individual investors custody and trading services for 15 selected cryptocurrencies. It also added tokenization services.

These new capabilities will allow BBVA to meet the needs of its private banking and institutional clients, including fund managers and large companies keen to explore new business opportunities in the digital environment.

The project’s deployment required the collaborative efforts of several bank departments, including business, legal, compliance, engineering, security and IT, as well as outside technology vendors Metaco and Avaloq.

China’s securities depository, China Central Depository & Clearing Co. (CCDC), recently rolled out one of the world’s first public platforms for blockchain-based digital bond issuance. The underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT) ensures data transparency, openness and multiparty verification.

Not only can market risk be better monitored, but market costs can be saved for participants: about $30 million so far, estimates CCDC. By the end of 2023, the blockchain-based digital bond platform was connected to more than 20 representative financial institutions, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, Bank of Communications and China Merchants Bank.     

R3’s Corda is a leading DLT platform for financial services organizations. In October, it powered the first digital bond issuance on Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure.

The bond, issued by the World Bank with Citi acting as issuer agent, raised €100 million (about $108 million) to support the World Bank’s sustainable development activities.

The Corda platform prioritizes privacy, security and interoperability; and it has supported many other DLT projects, including Progmat’s recent tokenized bond project in Japan. 

In December 2022, the First Abu Dhabi Bank launched a white-label treasury management system, delivered as software as a service (SaaS), in collaboration with fintech platform provider ION Group. One of the key features is a pay-as-you-go model that can bundle modules or functionalities depending on client needs and priced accordingly. Additional modules can be activated and made available when needed.

FAB also launched a sustainability-linked current account for businesses to support clients in achieving environmental, social and governance objectives by contributing to sustainable developments, integrated into their everyday cash management and a sustainability-linked supply chain finance offering.   

In 2023, Gulf International Bank began to offer an automated tool to help onboard suppliers electronically to supply chain finance programs. This tool allowed the entire buyer-supplier ecosystem to move away from manual invoice and payment processing to real-time monitoring of invoices, payments and balance tracking.    

The bank’s New Cash Management Program consists of two innovative solutions for corporate customers: the Multi-Currency Optimizer and Virtual Account Management. With the first customers activated at the end of 2023, the program includes the first and only notional cash pooling in Italy, optimizing corporate treasury management for groups of companies with international multicurrency operations, including foreign exchange (FX) and liquidity management.    

TreasurUp has created the first excess-liquidity front end for banks, going live in 2024. It’s designed from the clients’ point of view—bridging the gap between identifying liquidity needs and liquidity products—and ranges from basic trade to advanced optimization. Linked to cash visibility and cash flow forecasting, it gives an accurate starting point but also allows for a dynamic forecast and recommendation on a “best fit” product—from a savings account to fixed income products and even FX swaps, all using the bank’s pricing. Clients can choose from basic triggers to advanced liquidity management, combining multiple products seamlessly into cash positions and forecasts.  

Taiwan’s CTBC Bank has developed an AI-powered protocol designed to thwart customer-level fraud before it is committed. According to the bank, AI Skynet can identify 80% of suspicious accounts 90 days before a scam is reported, reducing fraud cases by 24%. CTBC has been using patented AI technologies to improve credit underwriting, reducing appraisal times by 40%. Its “digital robots” have generated credit scores for all 10.2 million of the bank’s customers.

CTBC Bank has the most ATMs of any organization in Taiwan. With the AI empowerment brought by its AI Skynet project, its ATMs now call the nearest dispatching police office automatically and in real time when a suspicious transaction is detected.

Banks increasingly use face-recognition technology for customer onboarding and electronic know-your-customer (KYC) compliance. However, companies still worry about “face-spoofing attacks,” in which fraudsters use a fake face—such as a photograph, 3D model, or physical mask—to bypass a facial recognition system.

Thailand’s KASIKORN Business-Technology Group has developed computer vision technology to foil such attacks. It uses active and passive “liveness” detections. Indeed, KASIKORN is the only organization in Thailand and the third in Asia to achieve this highest level of ISO accreditation for facial-liveness detection.        

Many of the new reportable fields introduced by the 2024 European Market Infrastructure Regulation Regulatory Fitness Program (EMIR Refit) relate to commodities and energy, and gathering the necessary reference data may prove challenging for many institutions. The new regulations went into effect for the EU on April 29 and will go into effect for the UK on September 30.

Fintech firm SmartStream’s Reference Data Services (RDS) has created a new data management service, EMIR Refit, to help firms comply. It is based on validated reference data gathered from multiple sources and covers exchange-traded derivatives and supporting attributes for listed securities traded over the counter. 

Features include opening foreign currency accounts, cardless cash withdrawals, integration of a digital wallet service, insightful views into spending, the DAwards rewards program, and access to the Rashid virtual assistant. The mobile platform also provides Islamic lifestyle services like checking prayer times, Qibla direction and Athkar, as well as weather forecasts. Families can view and transact using minor accounts. At the same time, cardholders have complete control over their cards. This includes enabling them for international use, managing cash advances and applying for new or replacement cards instantly.        

In a first for Bahrain, the National Bank of Kuwait launched, in June 2022, an enhanced app offering a comprehensive solution—integrating multiple banking products and simplifying the customer’s experience. The user can spend, earn and enjoy rewards without the worry of missing the settlement of outstanding payments.      

Launched in December 2023, QIB Lite is a user-friendly and simplified version of the QIB Mobile App designed for individuals seeking quick and straightforward access to their daily banking needs. It is aimed at low-income earners in Qatar to improve financial inclusion. It consolidates all features and services into one screen, making it easier to navigate and more accessible.          

February 2024 marked the launch of Jeel Weyay, an innovative digital banking experience for children ages 8-14, featuring a creatively designed card and access to their banking application.           

The Omnify API platform is part of Arab Bank’s fully integrated portfolio of digital banking offerings. Arab Bank’s fintech, Acabes, designed the banking-as-a-service (BaaS) API platform for select markets in the Middle East and North Africa. It enables partner companies to embed financial products for their customers while providing customers with the requisite tools to develop integrated and advanced offerings. Omnify also has different APIs that offer financial products like KYC screening, accounts using virtual international bank account numbers, custom virtual and physical credit and debit cards, and various payment capabilities.

Bank Millennium’s new mobile app for business and corporate customers is a user-friendly application that can handle large volumes of data for corporate finance departments. To develop the app, Bank Millennium interviewed customers to understand their organizations and how they use the bank’s solutions. The app provides many features like biometric login, easy management of multiple companies and company accounts, more functionality for domestic and foreign transfers, one-click payment authorization, complete order histories, and quickly generated statements that can be sent via a messaging app.          

Papaya Global’s workforce payments offering is an SaaS platform specially designed for the global workforce. This true end-to-end fintech platform fuses global payroll and cross-border payments into a single process. It delivers payments directly to a worldwide workforce, without bank processing or currency conversion fees. Papaya enables companies to pay an entire workforce, tax authorities and benefits vendors using a single platform. This automated platform supports different types of employment, ensures compliance globally and provides real-time reports on workforce spending. Papaya also integrates human resources and finance data through human capital management and enterprise resource planning systems to create a single source of truth for clients.

Standard Bank’s Smart Nudge supports client engagement by leveraging machine learning and AI to suggest personalized and innovative opportunities for clients, including additional information, products or other relevant content. This business-to-business engine considers the corporate decision-making environment and information across various trading-asset classes, client behavior, and transactional data to develop recommendations. With Smart Nudge, teams can collaborate across business units to expand relationships with clients further. This tool also recalibrates based on interactions and feedback to improve the accuracy of its output and recommendations.

Akbank’s wealth management team introduced a digital portfolio management product accessible through the bank’s Akbank Mobile app. This product simplifies investing for customers and lowers the barriers to entry for investing. The tool streamlines traditional processes and offers products tailored to its customers’ investment objectives. Customers also can access finance professionals who can help manage their portfolios. Users can select a portfolio that aligns with their risk tolerance and financial goals and monitor it on their mobile app while accessing funds at any time. By scaling its offerings, Akbank’s product has lowered the capital requirements and created a fully digital experience.     

Taxpayer refund advance loans are a high-demand product requiring analysis of thousands of documents during specific times of the year. Banco do Brasil’s Digital Compliance project leverages AI technology to create a more efficient process. The model extracts client information from the documents using a neural network and optical character recognition (OCR) services, including name, address, tax paid, bank account and validation codes. The Digital Compliance project saves time by processing millions of records and eliminating human error. The result is a better user experience.

Kuwaiti wealth adviser Markaz unveiled its GCC Momentum fund, the first passive fund to invest across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) markets to provide regional exposure. The fund follows the momentum methodology and holds shares of companies listed in the S&P Momentum GCC Composite Index that have sustained a high momentum score over the past 12 months. This fund capitalizes on the upward trajectory of stock prices by investing in those with the most growth momentum.        

The Apex Structured Liquidity Solution gives institutional and private investors access to private credit and microfinance industries. This low-risk cash management solution offers risk-adjusted returns in US dollars. It provides investors with a predictable fixed-income cash flow without the volatility of mark-to-market adjustments. Through a partnership with FAVO Capital, Apex leverages AI to analyze clients’ live bank accounts, assessing their creditworthiness within two hours. Integrating with client bank accounts ensures more-reliable repayments that result in steady returns for investors.          

The Pulsoo app gives small-business owners a holistic approach to managing financial and regulatory positions. The app, a collaboration between Banco BPI and the Portuguese telecom NOS, is tailored toward small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), sole proprietors, and self-employed professionals. The app can aggregate and initiate payments as well as connect with tax authorities. It can link multiple bank accounts from major Portuguese banks and access a consolidated view that includes balances and transactions. Pulsoo users can transfer funds between accounts, initiate service payments, and process payments for government authorities. Its budgeting functions help companies manage funds, and it provides a preview of upcoming transactions.          

Boubyan Bank recently enhanced the peer-to-peer payment functionality, called ePay, of its SME banking application, so that small businesses can seamlessly manage their payments. With ePay, customers can schedule payments with automatic payment links. The new subscription model works such that customers can settle payments weekly, monthly or annually. They can also send automatic SMS reminders to customers who have not yet paid. And ePay enables customers to pay the links with a debit card, between Boubyan users with a face ID, or a credit card.     

OTP Group’s Naturália is a digital credit offering for the agricultural sector that offers loans based on nonfinancial agricultural information. With more precise data, OTP Group can monitor the industry’s risks and trends and offer more personalized loans to customers. Naturália uses a detailed, transparent and integrated database that maps properties and collateral to provide bespoke loans to customers. The platform also processes requisite loan documents in an automated process that leverages the integration of business process management, robotic process automation, OCR, and many document management systems.       

Nedbank Mozambique reinvented how it services customers with its client-oriented structure for the brand, people, branches, processes and systems. This strategy has been the pillar of Nedbank Mozambique’s success, growth and unique positioning in the market.

Among the arrows in the bank’s quiver is NedSnap, a robotic process automation (RPA) platform that supports Nedbank’s employees by facilitating more-effective communication and timely results. This floating widget provides immediate visual feedback for a more-efficient user experience and enables different bank departments to generate chained tasks for more-seamless and effective operations.

Other tools include Miyo, which is designed to work with ChatGPT. It provides intelligent analysis and insight on business statistics and strategic decision-making. It processes questions in natural language and converts them to structured query language (SQL) queries so that users can access relevant information without navigating complex datasets.

NedDocs is the bank’s software offering that streamlines document analysis and validation with optical character recognition (OCR) technology and a natural-language processing model. This solution integrates with RPA systems to automate document workflows.         

More global banks are screening new clients these days, and one way they do this is by surfing the internet for potential bad news about a would-be customer. It’s usually a tedious, time-consuming process. DBS Bank, however, recently developed a new generative AI (genAI) tool for adverse-news screening that sifts through vast amounts of information rapidly and with heightened accuracy. It has already saved the bank the equivalent of five full-time employees across Singapore and neighboring regions. It has also shortened customer onboarding times and broadened risk coverage.

DBS also unveiled a new AI-based fraud-detection tool in 2023 that couples a high-tech machine learning algorithm with a more traditional rule-based detection engine. This has improved the bank’s precision and its capture rate by 50%.

The bank continues to innovate in the payments sector, too, including a cross-border QR payment linkage launched last year that lets consumers make real-time retail payments between Singapore and Southeast Asian countries by simply scanning the overseas merchants’ QR codes.           

Tatra banka is usually quick to adopt emerging technologies, and this past year was no exception. It became Slovakia’s first bank to offer digital account opening and digital loans to non-clients through a process that relies heavily on biometrics. Launched in May 2023, the new process had onboarded more than 30,000 new users by year end.

The bank encourages its employees to generate new ideas, and they do so—so many that Tatra recently implemented IDEApp. This idea-management platform employs an AI digital assistant to help collect, evaluate, prioritize and report ideas. This enables staff to know who’s doing what and to track an innovation’s stage of development.

The bank also recently developed a tool  to combat voice phishing, or “vishing,” in which fraudsters call consumers demanding important information in the bank’s name. Its anti-vishing protocol uses a push notification sent to a client’s phone with a unique code to prove the agent’s identity.         

In recent years, Banco BTG Pactual developed a digital platform to leverage opportunities in Latin America. BTG Dol is the bank’s entrée into digital assets. This dollar-pegged stablecoin bridges the gap between digital and fiat currencies and is a reserve of value for economies experiencing volatility. BTG has a background in cash and reserve management, and integrating this expertise with blockchain technology has helped elevate BTG Dol as a stablecoin with a higher level of trust and security than existing stablecoins.

BTG is also focused on its environmental solution strategy: first with its impact-oriented reforestation investment strategy in Latin America; and lately, with its minority investment in Systemica, a developer of carbon-reduction projects. With this investment, the bank aims to have a more technical branch to support investments in the carbon markets and environmental assets. Systemica’s CarbonSpore platform provides an online tool that manages and develops carbon-asset generation projects while monitoring deforestation in legal reserves and permanent preserves.

Mashreq’s innovation launches in 2023 were as varied as they are impressive. They included a nonresident platform for digital account opening with an Indian partner bank, allowing Indian customers, and very soon other nationalities, in the United Arab Emirates to open an account from the UAE in less than 10 minutes; a leasing platform for the real estate industry; inclusive wealth management services; an automation platform for trade asset sell down with predictive analytics and machine learning; real-time data-streaming analytics for contextual banking; an agency desk automation solution for syndicated loans; and a carbon-footprint calculator.

The bank also excelled with AI innovations, becoming the first bank in the region to release an integrated AI solution for hyperpersonalized insights to improve client experience and revenue growth by identifying opportunities and threats within portfolios. Corporate banking relationship managers, meanwhile, can benefit from an AI-based transaction deviation and early-warning signal system. —GW

Bank of America (BofA) is a leader in technological and digital innovation. The bank leverages its annual technology investments and corporate culture to support clients’ financial needs through improved user experience and products. As a mark of the bank’s progress, in 2023 its clients had a record 23.4 billion digital interactions, an 11% increase year over year.

BofA enhanced its digital banking platform with CashPro Data Intelligence, combining a client’s historical data with advanced analytics to suggest actionable insights, and benchmarking various areas. CashPro Developer Studio provides a solution for flexible, quick integration with instant issuance of application programming interface (API) sandbox credentials and production access. CashPro Chat enhancements extend the bank’s advanced virtual assistant to commercial clients.

“Client experience is very much front and center of our technology, and CashPro Chat now includes the same proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities behind Erica—the company’s virtual financial assistant—so our corporate clients can submit queries and get real-time answers,” says Andrew McKibben, international head of technology at BofA.      

CaixaBank pioneered lifestyle banking before most banks woke up to the need to integrate the banking experience with customers’ lives. The bank made several meaningful improvements throughout 2023 to improve customer journeys. These include a custom-pricing simulator, which provides a first-mortgage offer with a personalized price in real time; an option whereby customers can use the website and the CaixaBankNow app to aggregate and view their pension plans held with other entities; a digitized will-making service; and the instant payment of taxes, rates, and fines via the Spanish mobile payment service Bizum. To ensure it meets customer needs, CaixaBank guarantees that all digital products launched on the market have been tested, iterated and validated by actual customers—minimizing risks and improving the user experience without affecting time to market. CaixiaBank also established a Mobile Experience Lab—where employees can experiment with the market’s newest devices and gadgets and perform specific tests on their applications and those of third parties. 

MNT-Halan developed innovative technology that provides a digital solution for unbanked populations. The resulting products have driven digital engagement, customer retention and market share. The company’s Halan superapp offers remote access to consumers for the entire Halan product and service ecosystem, including small- and micro-business lending, payments, investment products, e-commerce, and consumer finance solutions like savings and buy-now-pay-later products. Housing these services in one app makes financial processes more accessible to underserved communities. Users can receive salaries through the app, transfer funds to other accounts, make investments and purchase items.

Among the company’s offerings is Neuron, a core banking system platform in the Middle East and Africa designed for integration. The API software enables MNT-Halan to connect with various digital banking services that optimize the banking experience. Neuron connects users, merchants, lending agents, and MNT-Halan branches to give customers a more active role in their finances while developing their businesses to achieve financial independence.    

Payment institution Roger (PiR), a fintech based in the Czech Republic, has developed the region’s first service for automated invoice verification. The service targets small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) that rely on factor financing to maintain consistent cash flow.

Verifying invoices’ creditworthiness is critical in factor financing, but it takes time. However, using automation and an online interface, PiR has dramatically shortened the period an SME must wait to be paid—from 60-90 days to just three days.

Each invoice is automatically processed based on electronic data interchange communication. Input data is decomposed into structured code, and the system then transforms it into invoices written to the verify invoices interface and then sent for approval.

SMEs now receive as much as 75% of the value of their invoice within three days, with the remaining 25% after the customer has paid.      

Moody’s is developing new offerings that disseminate its data and expertise to help its customers mitigate tomorrow’s risks. By leveraging AI and machine learning, Moody’s products create efficiencies and deliver powerful insights to customers. The company deployed a copilot tool to employees to drive firmwide innovation and create a development life cycle. Moody’s Research Assistant is an add-on to CreditView that combines genAI with Moody’s proprietary data. This product is designed to find real-time answers and generate credit memos and custom reports from Moody’s extensive content. The Automated Credit Memo combines genAI technology, data and analytics to assist loan underwriters in creating comprehensive, consistent credit memos for review and approval. This solution compiles relevant information currently in a bank origination system. It combines that with Moody’s content on borrowers, market conditions and third-party data, that can be integrated with Moody’s available financial data and know-your-customer compliance data.

Following a successful launch in the UK and North America, MilltechFX expanded into Europe in March 2022. With its FX-as-a-Service offering, MilltechFX’s multibank FX marketplace helps asset managers and corporates significantly reduce FX costs and the operational burden associated with FX execution and rolling hedging requirements.  

In 2023, Citibanamex released several outstanding consumer banking innovations to improve user experience (UX). These include micro animations, messages, and its new user login splash page on its financial app.

“Our innovative mobile dashboard leverages cutting-edge UX techniques, including animated cards that dynamically display crucial information such as account balances, investment fund earnings through animated charts, and personalized offers enhanced with custom animations,” says Rosario Valdivia, Citibanamex’s CIO. “Additionally, we introduced app functionalities with animated tutorials, making complex processes simple and accessible, thereby enriching user engagement and satisfaction.”

The bank’s 360 Smart Client Hub provides personalized omnichannel customer journeys powered by artificial intelligence (AI). It uses real-time triggers to facilitate interactions, and a suite of management tools to boost operational efficiency and productivity.

“By harnessing insights from our customers through custom machine-learning models, we can meticulously analyze feedback to prioritize our digital channels backlog, provide live-moment relevant products and services, and improve our fraud detection systems,” Valdivia adds. “This approach not only enhances our responsiveness but also accelerates the delivery of tailored, value-driven solutions that elevate the customer experience to unprecedented levels. The next step is the adoption of generative AI to increase our capabilities further.”

HSBC delivered the world’s first multicurrency digital bond offering in February 2024. In addition to being a game-changer for future digital bond issuances, this was the largest-ever digital bond deal. It generated investor demand unprecedented to date for a digital bond—with over 50 global investors. The multicurrency digital bond issuance included the US dollar, Chinese offshore renminbi, Hong Kong dollar, and the euro. It also stood out for the use by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s central securities depository, the Central Moneymarkets Unit, of the bank’s digital assets platform, HSBC Orion.

Meanwhile, the bank has implemented Project Ascend, a scalable first for the industry portfolio nonpayment insurance offering for trade finance assets. Partnering with three leading global insurers and insurance broker Marsh, HSBC has created a granular pool of diversified midmarket enterprise (MME) and small and midsize enterprise (SME) trade loans in Hong Kong. The insurance companies provide pro rata nonpayment insurance on the entire pool of loans without the need to underwrite individual loans for individual companies, helping them to gain more exposure to trade finance in a diversified manner. While HSBC retains certain uninsured exposure on these loans, the solution makes lending to MMEs and SMEs more attractive, as the bank now can efficiently distribute its risk and free up capital.

Since ING launched a generative AI (genAI) chatbot in September 2023, thousands of the bank’s customers have interacted with it. It’s the first of its kind, as a customer-facing pilot conducted in Europe. Working as a team with global consultancy McKinsey, it took just seven weeks to build and deploy the service. Having created a path to double the performance of the chatbot in the subsequent six months, ING plans to build a scalable model that can be extended to all other ING countries and to set up a technical foundation for ING to address a comprehensive set of genAI use cases across the group. The pilot study helped define a blueprint to scale across 10 markets, with the potential to impact more than 37 million customers across 40 countries, far outpacing previous industry-standard chatbots that can take several years of programming and fine-tuning to get into shape.

By migrating its corporate and investment banking business to a new cloud-based digital banking platform, Gravity, Santander can now benefit from parallel processing. This enables it to run workloads on its existing core banking mainframe and the cloud simultaneously, allowing the bank to perform real-time testing without disrupting any of its businesses.

Once satisfied with the new system’s stability and performance, the bank can transition from the mainframe system to the cloud.

Gravity allows Santander to deploy on both private and public clouds. Having successfully migrated all its commercial customers in the UK and its consumer business in Chile without any service interruption, Santander plans to relocate most of its core banking worldwide to the Gravity platform by the end of 2024, mostly in its private cloud.

“The Santander CIB migration to the cloud is a new milestone in the group’s transformation toward a simpler, more integrated model, contributing to enhanced profitability,” Dirk Marzluf, Santander’s chief operating and technology officer, said in a statement.

Santander CIB manages over a million accounting operations and half a million treasury operations daily on the cloud via the Gravity platform. Santander estimates that the Gravity platform will operate more than a trillion technical executions within the bank’s systems every year.

Global Finance: What drives the innovation that you’re building into your business?

André Portilho: Innovation is essential tool for the continual evolution of products, processes and services to meet current and future market demands. We invest in innovative solutions that maintain a human touch, and our open innovation model integrates with startups and other partners. In Brazil, BTG Pactual is among the pioneers that are building systems in which customers can share their information between institutions.

GF: How have you used technology to overcome business challenges?

Portilho: For years, BTG Pactual discussed plans to bring a retail banking experience to the market. This would require a significant physical presence that, given Brazil’s large size, would take years and considerable capital to build.

Technology developments in the past decade allowed BTG Pactual to rethink this strategy and launch a fully digital retail bank. Our retail funding base has consistently grown. We are now focused on launching our digital business banking platform for SMEs, as we believe this segment in Brazil is underserved.

GF: How is the BTG Dol different from other stablecoins? How do you see digital assets fitting into your overall strategy and the future?

Portilho: BTG Pactual brings an exceptional layer of trust and security to BTG Dol, which is essential for a stablecoin. The BTG Dol is easily accessible through the bank’s platforms, such as the BTG Investimentos app and the Mynt platform. 

BTG Pactual is a pioneer in adopting blockchain technologies. The bank sees tokenization as a fundamental component of the future of financial assets.

GF: How can stablecoins bridge the gap between fiat and cryptocurrency markets?

Portilho: Stablecoins provide a less-volatile entry point into the crypto markets, attracting investors who might otherwise be wary of the typical fluctuations associated with cryptocurrencies. A broader investor base can lead to increased liquidity and adoption of blockchain technologies.

Additionally, stablecoins facilitate strategic partnerships between traditional financial institutions and fintech innovations. These collaborations enhance product offerings and operational efficiencies, helping institutions to seamlessly integrate with digital markets while maintaining robust compliance and governance frameworks. This enriches the financial ecosystem and ensures a standardized approach to managing digital transactions.

GF: How has technology innovation advanced sustainability initiatives?

Rafaella Dortas: All of BTG Pactual’s relationships and transactions undergo a socioenvironmental due-diligence process based on the principles of relevance and proportionality. For each business segment and industry, the Environmental, Social and Governance Management System [ESGMS] specifically addresses ESG risk so that it’s appropriately identified, assessed, classified, monitored and mitigated. We have also developed systems and processes to facilitate our ESG risk analysis. These include a customized system used for SMEs [small and midsize enterprises] that compares companies with various publicly available data sources, including an extensive database of socioenvironmental and climate risks. We also have a tool for rural properties that combines satellite imagery with public information and geospatial data to analyze the land’s overlap with different types of territories, Rural Environmental Registry that records protected lands, and embargoed environments.

GF: How will technology impact sustainable finance?

Dortas: Technology accelerates execution and reduces costs in the environmental-asset project development process. There are major barriers in terms of accessing land, but technology can help us overcome these barriers to develop the environmental assets market. The CarbonSpore’s technology [which estimates potential carbon credits a region could produce] provides significant cost savings in monitoring, managing and analyzing opportunities and projects, while facilitating investment decision-making and establishing strategies. With banks increasingly entering the environmental assets market, these tools are revolutionary for the industry. They identify territories that are more likely to achieve socioenvironmental and climatic success. Also, CarbonSpore helps create strategies for expanding project areas that generate better results in terms of social quality and biodiversity. It’s impact lies in its agility and its financial savings, which are two of the biggest challenges in the environmental assets market.

Global Finance: What is the state of case law around generative artificial intelligence (AI) and its derivative products? Writers are filing lawsuits against companies behind the largest generative AI engines for not getting permission to use their content for training purposes. Where are we in the game?

Devika Kornbacher: The New York Times case is the seminal case that everybody’s paying attention to. The complaint and defenses have changed. Any foundational model needs something to be trained on to be useful—that’s just a fact. If you train it on a small universe, that’s all it’s going to give you. If your goal is to have accurate, fulsome, smart generative AI, you need to train it on everything, but then there’s the issue of intellectual property (IP), copyright and compensation. We have to fight this out to figure out the rules.

These cases raise several critical questions. For instance, one side says they’re not violating copyright because they read the website and learned from it, and then moved on. Then the argument became it’s fair use and not reading. The complaints and defenses are changing before the game has even started, and there isn’t enough case law to reliably predict how this will play out.

GF: How does the lack of case law affect innovation of generative AI?

Kornbacher: That’s our challenge. There’s a lot of regulation that’s not in force yet, like the EU AI Act. Those looking to innovate technology have moved on and are playing by their own rules. While there are parts of the world that decide to restrain innovation through subpoenas, other parts of the world are afraid they’ll fall behind. China already has regulation, innovation and a plan. In other countries, there’s a dissonance between case law, regulation and innovation.

GF: Is there a country that’s more like the Wild West with regards to technology innovation, meaning there’s little regulation?

Kornbacher: Some would argue the US is the Wild West when it comes to innovation—everybody’s doing everything—but we have some enforcement. Another area from a legislative perspective is China. China has shown more decisiveness in how to run the race while the rest of the world is still thinking about how we should run it. China has regulations and rules that are in effect, and told people to go develop the technology. Meanwhile, Europe, the US, and other parts of Asia are still trying to figure out that balance.

GF: As companies develop their technology, they try to understand how business and regulation is different when they cross borders. What are the key issues for companies in this area?

Kornbacher: There’s the fear of missing out because one company will see what another company is doing, and they race to stay in the game. When it comes to generative AI in particular—because companies have been using AI as machine learning and analytics for some time—the fear is top of mind. In reality, however, most are in the same spot. Many of the companies that are publicly talking about their technology don’t have a viable version in production yet.

Once companies realize that their competition isn’t that far ahead of them, they have to adjust their risk management program. In financial services, companies have a global risk management team, and they have to figure out the risks with AI from these regulations and who owns managing the risks that are presented to the organization by the use of AI. Regulations don’t always clearly define who’s at fault if something goes wrong and whether that’s the user of the AI tool or the provider of the AI tool. Companies also struggle with how they talk about the enterprise and governance framework, and whether they should have a principles-based approach for their enterprise or a detailed, step-by-step procedure for compliance.

GF: Is AI regulation worthwhile? What might be the reason for not having any regulation?

Kornbacher: From a regulatory perspective, you can’t develop a global solution that dictates what the whole world needs to do because every government works differently.

The EU has always worked in a way where if there’s an issue, they develop a very comprehensive bill and then pull in all the member states. That’s how the regulation works—it comes from on high, it’s promulgated, and then people start designing programs toward it.

The US won’t have something that comes out fast and is comprehensive, and the US doesn’t have comprehensive regulation on AI. There’s an executive order which doesn’t regulate down to every component but offers direction for a lot of agencies. Current regulations are being used by many of these agencies and other agencies enforce against the use or development of AI that is deemed to be out of bounds. That works for the US.

Now, let’s go somewhere where the government has been shifting for years and where there may be the ability to pass legislation quickly. You have to consider both the regulation getting passed quickly and if you actually have the people to enforce it. For privacy, Brazil passed legislation fast, but it kept getting delayed because there’s nobody to enforce it. In that region, you need to think through whether it’s urgent to get the regulation or to figure out how to actually enforce something, or maybe just use existing privacy laws and get more people to focus on AI. I don’t think racing to regulation is the right answer for everyone everywhere.

GF: What are the types of global regulation we could see going forward? What tech risks does this bring?

Kornbacher: The idea of global regulation or a treaty of some sort—I don’t see that happening imminently. There are global principles that are starting to take shape around accountability, safety and transparency that then make their way into the local regulations or even local enforcement.

Technology is developed regionally and even used and consumed regionally in some respects, making global regulation much more difficult. For tech risk, while technology is borderless, the risk will depend on the region. If a global company is developing a product that uses a piece of hardware with AI, and it uses developers and suppliers from a nation on a banned list, then the risk of embargoes increases. If the company doesn’t use that supplier, it’ll be behind because that’s where the technology is already done. The economic risk is missing out on what could be a multibillion-dollar market share over the next decade. All these risks are bundled with the tech risk.

GF: There was a big decline in merger activity over the past few years because of the economy, not regulation. But now the tables are turning, and it seems that tech regulation is standing in the way of some deals. How do you balance the need for regulation and for more dealmaking activity?

Kornbacher: During the dot-com bubble, every small startup was valued at $1 billion, and these were all going to change the world, but then the bubble burst. We went from that world to tech consolidation, the behemoths, Big Tech.

Big Tech happens through merger activity. Instead of developing technology in-house, they just buy it. We went through a world of tech consolidation and tech innovation, but regulation came in to say that companies are getting too big. Regulation can absolutely affect the way consolidation and merger activity happen. I do think we’re moving to a phase where Big Tech will be Big Tech, but buying everything will no longer be easy—trying to turn two Big Techs into one will become almost impossible. It doesn’t help that we’ve had some big breaches and misuse of information, which is then blamed on a company being too big.

Since you can’t watch all the corners, regulation will dictate what you need to do. So, I do think tech regulation will affect merger activity and how people think about it. Companies are going to be more thoughtful about their acquisitions than in previous iterations of the tech market.

Kuwait is one of the richest countries in the world. The country’s banks are under the supervision of the Kuwait Central Bank and provide both Islamic and conventional banking services to businesses and consumers. Since 1968, foreign banks have operated in Kuwait.

The government is a constitutional, hereditary emirate with an economy based on the oil and gas industry. Kuwait has been slow to diversify its economy as oil and gas continues to provide more than 90% of the country’s exports and revenue. Also, the country has a generous welfare system, with about 80% of public spending allocated to civil service wages and subsidies.

To boost Kuwait’s economy, at the start of 2024, Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem, the new prime minister, presented a plan for fiscal and economic overhauls to Parliament that would transform the country and allow for a more diverse banking system. Among the measures, the plan would end the monopoly enjoyed by Kuwait Credit Bank and allow commercial banks into the market for property loans. As of publication, the reception of this plan is unknown.

Because of the country’s strong fiscal and external balance sheets, ratings agencies have assigned investment-grade sovereign ratings to Kuwait: A+ from S&P, AA– from Fitch and A1 from Moody’s.

Our proprietary algorithm scores each bank based on its ratings from top global agencies—Fitch, Moody’s, S&P—to identify the safest banks out of the 1,000 largest banks worldwide. Key rankings include Safest Commercial Banks, Safest Emerging Markets Banks, Safest Islamic Banks, and Safest Banks in individual countries and in particular regions. Bank ratings data are valid as of August 2023. Global Finance’s scores for the eight Kuwaiti banks ranged from 8.5 to 17. Ratings were valid as of August 2023.

The National Bank of Kuwait is the country’s Safest Bank and the fourth Safest Bank in the Middle East. As one of Kuwait’s largest banks with approximately $119 billion USD in assets, it also ranks 54^th among the Safest Commercial Banks worldwide and 17^th among the Safest Emerging Market Banks. NBK is the first indigenous bank in the entire Arabian Gulf region and today has 138 branches, subsidiaries and representative offices in 13 countries, seven of which are in the Middle East.

https://www.nbk.com/

Boubyan Bank is the second Safest Islamic Bank in the Middle East and ranked 30^th among the Safest Emerging Market Banks and 94^th among the Safest Commercial Banks worldwide. The bank has about $26 billion USD in assets and provides retail banking, corporate banking and wealth management services. The bank is part of the Boubyan Group with four other subsidiaries that provide investment and asset management, real estate services, insurance, and banking. Boubyan Bank’s shares are publicly traded on Boursa Kuwait, with the National Bank of Kuwait as the majority shareholder.

https://boubyan.bankboubyan.com/

Kuwait’s first Islamic bank, Kuwait Finance House, is one of the region’s top Islamic banks and ranked 35^th among the Safest Emerging Market Banks and 113^th among the Safest Commercial Banks worldwide. This past February, KFH completed the largest merger within Kuwait’s banking sector by purchasing Bahrain-based Ahli United Bank for $11.6 billion. Ahli United Bank was also one of the region’s top Islamic banks and ranked 44th among the Safest Emerging Market Banks and 127^th among the Safest Commercial Banks worldwide. The newly merged institution will support economic diversity and Kuwait’s development plans. The largest shareholders of Kuwait Finance House include the Kuwait Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund, Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation, Public Authority for Minors’ Affairs, and the Public Institution for Social Security public pension fund.

https://www.kfh.com

With about $21 billion USD in assets, Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait has branches in Kuwait, Egypt and the UAE. The bank is owned in part by The Public Institution for Social Security of Kuwait and the Kuwait Investment Authority.

https://abk.eahli.com/

Gulf Bank of Kuwait is one of the country’s largest banks, with about $22 billion USD in assets. The bank provides consumer banking, wholesale banking, treasury and financial services.

https://www.e-gulfbank.com/

The Commercial Bank of Kuwait is the second oldest bank in Kuwait. With about $14 billion USD in assets, the bank was one of the first financial institutions to offer Sharia-compliant financial services.

https://www.cbk.com

Warba Bank is one of the region’s top Islamic banks, with about $14 billion USD in assets. Established in 2010, the bank’s major shareholders include the Kuwait Investment Authority, Al Sayer Group Holding Company, Abdullah Saleh Abdullah Al Shalfan, and Public Institution for Social Security.

https://www.warbabank.com/english/personal

Egypt has been struggling to stabilize its economy amid a long-running currency crunch. The county has also had a troubled industrial policy and developed significant trade deficits. To make matters worse, Egypt’s political risk is high as well because of its proximity to the Israel-Palestine conflict with Gaza right next door. These issues—along with high inflation and high unemployment—create ongoing potential for social unrest.

Our proprietary algorithm scores each bank based on its ratings from top global agencies—Fitch, Moody’s, S&P—to identify the safest banks out of the 1,000 largest banks worldwide. Key rankings include Safest Commercial Banks, Safest Emerging Markets Banks, Safest Islamic Banks, and Safest Banks in individual countries and in particular regions. Bank ratings data are valid as of August 2023 and ratings were valid as of August 2023.

National Bank of Egypt (NBE) the safest bank in Egypt and one of the safest in Africa overall. Founded in 1898 with British capital, NBE bank is one of the oldest commercial banks in Egypt and also the largest. In December 2022, the bank’s financial position was EGP 4.4 trillion and its total assets accounted for 38.6% of total assets of all Egyptian banks. NBE is also owned by the Egyptian government.

https://www.nbe.com.eg

Behind NBE, Banque Misr is the second largest bank in the country with assets of about $120 billion. Its more than 800 branches and 20,000 employees serve a customer base of over 13 million clients. The bank is owned by the Egyptian government.

https://www.banquemisr.com

Commercial International Bank (CIB) is Egypt’s third largest bank and largest private bank, with a 6% share of banking assets. CIB was initially founded as a joint venture between Chase National Bank and NBE in 1975—Chase divested its ownership stake to NBE in 1987. CIB is publicly traded with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company, along with NBE among its top shareholders.

https://www.cibeg.com

Banque du Caire is the sixth largest bank in Egypt with a customer base of more than 3 million. The bank’s comparatively low score is partly due to being rated by only two of the three global rating agencies. The bank is owned by Banque Misr, which is owned by the Egyptian state.

https://www.bdc.com.eg

Bank of Alexandria is one of Egypt’s largest banks, serving over 1.8 million customers. Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo owns 80% of the bank, with the Egyptian state owning the remaining 20%. Bank of Alexandria’s low score is attributed in part to being rated by only one of the three global rating agencies.

https://www.alexbank.com

Qatar is one of the safer, stable and prosperous countries in the Middle East. The country has a sophisticated banking system that provides both Islamic and conventional banking services and has eight banks in the top 1,000 safest banks. The banking system supports the country’s economy, with oil and gas serving as Qatar’s backbone. The QIA started acquiring equity ownership in all domestic banks listed on the Qatar Exchange and has ownership shares in the eight banks among the world’s 1,000 largest. The country is working to diversify its economy and has created emerging opportunities in technology, manufacturing, and agriculture, for example.

Oil revenues have fueled Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), which holds over $500B USD in assets today, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. Revenues from the oil and gas industry as well as investment income from the QIA have generated a budget surplus for the Qatari government. As a result, ratings agencies have assigned strong investment-grade sovereign ratings to Qatar: AA from S&P (November 2022), Aa2 from Moody’s (January 2024) and AA from Fitch (April 2024). Fitch’s April 2024 upgrade of Qatar’s sovereign rating to AA from AA– was followed by upgrades for seven of the eight banks on this list: Qatar National Bank, Qatar Islamic Bank, Dukhan Bank, Qatar International Islamic Bank, Ahli Bank, The Commercial Bank, and Doha Bank.

Our proprietary algorithm scores each bank based on its ratings from top global agencies—Fitch, Moody’s, S&P—to identify the safest banks out of the 1,000 largest banks worldwide. Key rankings include Safest Commercial Banks, Safest Emerging Markets Banks, Safest Islamic Banks, and Safest Banks in individual countries and in particular regions. Bank ratings data were valid as of August 2023. Global Finance’s scores for the eight Qatari banks ranged from 9.5 to 18. Ratings were valid as of August 2023.

Bank ratings swing with their country’s sovereign rating, and next year’s Safest Banks list will likely see improved scores for Qatar’s safest banks.

Qatar National Bank (QNB) is the Safest Bank in Qatar and among the safest banks in the world, coming in at No. 65 among the World’s Safest Banks, No. 43 in the Safest Commercial Banks ranking and No. 14 of the Safest Emerging Market Banks. Assuredly then also one of the safest banks in the Middle East, QNB is among the largest banks in the region, with over $325 billion in assets. It ranks second on our list of Safest Banks in the Middle East. The bank has an ownership structure split 50% to each QIA and the private sector. While QNB’s operations expand beyond Qatar, QNB has helped Qatar transform from a traditional commodity-based economy to a global powerhouse.

https://www.qnb.com

Qatar Islamic Bank is Qatar’s safest bank in the Islamic banking sector, ranking first in our Safest Islamic Bank rankings. It is the largest Islamic bank in Qatar, with about QAR 189.2 billion in assets. It also makes the top 50 Safest Emerging Market Banks, coming in at No. 43.

https://www.qib.com.qa

Dukhan Bank is one of Qatar’s largest Sharia-compliant banks and the third largest bank in the country. The bank has QAR 75.4 billion in assets and is about 43% government owned. It is among the 100 Safest Emerging Market Banks and in the top 10 of Safest Islamic Banks in the Middle East, and therefore one of the safest banks in Qatar.

https://www.dukhanbank.com/

Qatar International Islamic Bank offers products tailored to corporations and high-net worth clients. The Sharia-compliant bank is privately owned, with QIA holding a 16% stake, and has a presence in Morocco. It is also among the 100 Safest Emerging Market Banks, and the top 10 Safest Islamic Banks in the Middle East, as well as one of the safest banks in Qatar.

https://www.qiib.com.qa/

Of the world’s largest 1,000 banks, Masraf Al Rayan is the second largest Islamic bank in Qatar and about 33% government owned. The bank squeaks into the 100 Safest Commercial Banks, at  No. 95. The bank offers Sharia-compliant products and services to retail, corporate, and private banking sectors. The bank is only rated by Moody’s.

https://www.alrayan.com

Ahli Bank both banking and insurance services, and QIA holds about 52% of the bank’s shares.

https://www.ahlibank.com.qa

The Commercial Bank one of Qatar’s largest banks, with 17% ownership by QIA. Much of the bank’s sector funding is government related.

https://www.cbq.qa

Doha Bank provides domestic and international banking services and has branches throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Europe although most of its revenue is from Qatar. The bank has about QAR 101 billion in assets and is about 17% owned by QIA.

https://qa.dohabank.com