Turning banking into a business of dreams

Antonio Coppolecchia, Financial Services lead for Accenture Song in EMEA, looks back at ten years of observing key innovation trends and shows us how we can turn banking into a ‘business of dreams’.


Ten years of celebrating innovation

This year’s Qorus-Accenture Banking Innovation Awards were not an ordinary edition. We celebrated the tenth anniversary of the awards, and it’s a milestone worth highlighting. During this decade, we got over 5,000 submissions from over 1,000 financial institutions. It’s hard to imagine something more global and engaging, not just in banking.

Winners and forecasting trends

Together with the Accenture Research team, we analyzed banking innovation submissions over the past decade and discovered that on average, our winners achieved slightly higher growth rates. In addition, those who win tend to do so more than once. 

Together with participating banks, we have built a great window to see the upcoming disruptions in our industry. Let’s take a few examples of this success in forecasting new trends. 

In 2016 we were on stage talking about the ‘year of bots’, long before chatbots became as relevant as they are today. The next year, 2017, the evolution of open banking was at the center of our reflections – a trend that is now a must-have in every bank’s strategy. In 2019, when ESG was the hot topic, we were talking about sustainability as a common thread of the big transformations to come.