Banking transformation in action: KBC Bank
KBC Bank in Belgium presented the incredible transformation work they have accomplished.
As part of the Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2026, we selected a few of the banks whose projects impressed us the most. Among them, KBC Bank in Belgium presented the incredible transformation work they have accomplished.
What transformation strategy has your organization led in recent years?
KBC has led a multi-year transformation anchored in its "digital first with human touch" strategy, evolving from a traditional bancassurer into a customer-centric, ecosystem-driven financial services group. The vision is to embed banking and insurance seamlessly into customers' daily lives and key life moments.
The transformation spans:
- Business model: from product-centric to ecosystem- and value-based propositions
- Operating model: end-to-end digital journeys with seamless human fallback
- Technology: AI, data, cloud and scalable platform capabilities
- Customer experience: hyper-personalized, proactive and omnichannel
- Workforce & culture: cross-functional collaboration, experimentation and ownership.
Flagship initiatives such as KBC Mobile with Kate, Kate Coins, embedded ecosystem services, AI-driven advisory and commercial employee augmentation demonstrate how KBC consistently translates strategy into scalable, customer-relevant innovation.
What prompted this strategic transformation?
The transformation was driven by fundamental shifts in customer expectations, rapid digitalization, increasing complexity of financial products, rising cost and efficiency pressures, and evolving digital fraud risks. Customers expect intuitive, always-available digital services combined with trusted human advice at critical moments. At the same time, competition from digital-native players and BigTech increased the urgency to differentiate through trust, relevance and simplicity, rather than price alone. Internally, KBC recognized the need to scale innovation beyond isolated initiatives and embed it structurally across banking and insurance.
Long-term goals included safeguarding customer trust, improving operational efficiency, strengthening ecosystem positioning, and ensuring sustainable growth in a regulated environment. These dynamics prompted leadership to invest decisively in digital platforms, AI, data-driven decisioning and a unified bancassurance experience.
What have been the most significant changes implemented, and how were they led?
KBC's most significant shift has been moving from siloed products to end-to-end, ecosystem-enabled customer journeys, where banking and insurance are embedded in daily life and key moments. This is made tangible through solutions such as MyHome and MyMobility, which provide integrated dashboards combining financing, insurance, and relevant third-party services (e.g. utilities, car services) into a single, proactive customer experience. These ecosystems, powered by KBC Mobile and digital assistant Kate, orchestrate seamless interactions across digital and human channels.
Equally transformative is the augmentation of employees: commercial teams are supported by AI-driven insights, next-best actions and automated workflows, enabling more relevant customer interactions and higher productivity.
Leadership enabled this shift through clear enterprise ambition, strong governance, and reusable group capabilities ("build once, deploy across countries"). External recognition, including top rankings for Kate ("Best Bot of Belgium") and KBC Mobile ("World's Best Banking App"), confirms both customer impact and technological maturity.
What unique or key transformation practices do you follow to ensure success?
KBC executes transformation through scalable platforms, cross-functional teams, and strong ecosystem partnerships. A unique differentiator is Start it @KBC, our long-running startup accelerator, which connects corporate capabilities with entrepreneurial speed, real customer problems, and rapid experimentation.
Beyond mentoring and community, KBC reinforces this model with structured funding: €100M via Start it Fund for early-stage ventures and growth support through KBC Securities. This enables innovations to scale from idea to market impact.
This combination of innovation practice and structured funding turns collaboration into repeatable outcomes, fuels ecosystem growth, and reinforces KBC's ability to industrialize innovation (incl. in digital and AI capabilities) while staying compliant and customer-centric.
How has your workforce been engaged and transformed through this journey?
KBC's workforce transformation is anchored in PEARL+, our shared leadership and culture framework: Performance, Empowerment, Accountability, Responsibility, Local embeddedness (+ partnerships/synergies). PEARL+ creates psychological safety and clear ownership so teams can innovate across functions and countries while keeping the customer first. In practice, leaders empower employees to take initiative, learn from outcomes, and continuously professionalize - supported by transparent feedback and shared responsibility.
This cultural foundation is reinforced by "augmentation" through Kate: Kate4Employees supports colleagues with commercial steering, automation of administrative tasks, and better coaching/management insights - freeing time for higher-value customer interactions.
Together, PEARL+ and digital augmentation make transformation tangible for employees: less repetitive work, clearer priorities, and more impact where humans add the most value.
What measurable outcomes demonstrate the success of your transformation?
KBC's transformation delivers "wow-effect" outcomes at scale through Kate and digital ecosystems. In 2025, Kate handled 7.9 million conversations (21,500/day) and reached 82% autonomy - meaning most questions were correctly understood and resolved without human intervention. Kate's growth is structural: usage rose from 1.35M (2021) to 7.91M (2025), and KBC now targets 10M conversations in 2026. Kate is also an efficiency engine: the 10M ambition explicitly aims to avoid 338k inbound interactions in 2026, equivalent to 38FTE in the network (based on autonomy and handling-time assumptions in the business case). The capability base is broad: >250 Kate use cases are already in place.
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