This year’s winner of the award for Latin America’s best digital bank, Davivienda, has not just adopted the digital channels of new startup rivals but has gone further. The bank has embraced digital banking, blockchain adaptation, artificial intelligence and the metaverse. The result is an intriguing and compelling mix of upgraded old-bank processes through digital infrastructure and completely new business opportunities.
The bank, under the leadership of chief executive Javier Suárez Esparragoza since November 2021, has developed a digital ecosystem to connect its customers and boost digital adoption. It now supports 170,000 small businesses and entrepreneurs through its apps, Mi Negocio and Mi Comercio, enabling these clients to reach customers more easily and supporting growth with digital payments, catalog creation, inventory management and other non-core banking functionality.
In the past year, the bank deployed over 50 application programming interfaces and moved from implementing four app versions a year to 14 upgrades in 2022.
The bank’s Daviplata digital platform now reaches 15.6 million customers, covering 99.3% of Colombia’s territory, and, as the only financial product for 4.1 million Colombians, is having a very real impact on financial inclusion. More than 80% of the bank’s new clients are now reached through digital channels.
And digital innovation isn’t just boosting new business: the bank has developed digital self-management tools for its mobile app that have reduced account blocks and declined transactions by 70%. Around 83% of transaction queries are now handled digitally, while the bank has cut digital channel friction to boost business.
Davivienda hasn’t restricted its digital innovation: it worked with IDB Invest to issue the first blockchain bond in Latin America. The deal sought to generate a more transparent, agile and safe market – one that reduces the cost and complexity of issuance. The blockchain bond allowed the involvement of more market participants than in traditional bond issuance.
The bank also used blockchain technology to transform the issuance of bank guarantees, delivering a more secure and transparent process, cutting processing times to 30 seconds from 30 minutes and saving more than Ps1 billion ($242,000)
The bank’s Daviplata digital platform now reaches 15.6 million customers, covering 99.3% of Colombia’s territory
In the past year, Davivienda also optimized the capacity of its cloud components, which enables the bank to generate a greater number of projects, boost efficiency and minimize offline incidents.
Meanwhile, anticipating the theme of 2023, Davivienda invested in artificial intelligence, creating a virtual assistant that can conduct transactions by voice for the bank’s customers in the power sector. The bank also launched NFTalents, a metaverse-based technology designed to improve social inclusion.
In cryptocurrencies, the bank launched the first Colombian platform for household, health and real estate services to accept bitcoin as a payment.
And in a busy and diverse digital year, the final word goes to the Davivienda’s net promoter score, which now sits above 90 points.
