Awards for Excellence 2017
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The winner of the best digital bank award is Bancolombia. Its investment in its digital strategy paid off last year and its customers – across all banking segments – embraced the functionality, praised its intuitive performance and, above all, migrated to the internet, ATM and mobile apps.
The prize for all banks is to maximize the proportion of clients’ transactions in digital channels to optimize efficiency – none came close to the Colombian bank’s efforts last year. In 2016, 68% of the bank’s transactions were executed digitally. Last year, Bancolombia’s digital volumes alone amounted to 22% of the entire system.
However, Bancolombia’s strategy is not just about driving customers to digital to lower its operational costs. The bank is at the forefront of using the data generated to enable customized service offerings, to enhance the client experience and increase revenues through targeted cross-selling.
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New digital channels are also bringing new, unbanked customers to the bank. The development of Nequi, a mobile app that enables Colombians to make payments, transfers and enter into conversations with the bank without the need to create a bank account means that Bancolombia is able to tap new customer segments.
The bank says Nequi has already been downloaded 122,000 times and more than 30,000 young people have had an experience with the financial system without ever having visited a bank branch. The success of this app led to a version for small and medium-sized enterprises that has been downloaded by nearly 30,000 SMEs and to date led to more than 200,000 transactions.
In total, the number of transactions conducted by mobiles in the past year grew by 72% (volumes by 75%). These developments enhance the bank’s digital reputation – it is already a pioneer in contactless credit and debit cards. In 2016, the volume of billing on these cards tripled to Ps6,800 billion ($2.32 million) – an 845% increase in transactions.
Ultimately, the proof of the digital strategy was seen in the final results and, despite a modest year for credit growth in the Colombian banking system, Bancolombia jumped to seventh-largest bank in the region from 10th the year before. Net income increased by 13.75%.
