Dear Members of the Trailblazer Awards,

The quest forAsia’s most innovative bank continues

We couldn’t wait to get started into a new round of the BPA Trailblazer Awards following the great success of last year’s programme. With over 100 submissions from more than 40 retail banks across the region, we clearly confirm a trend of retail banking innovations moving towards the East, particularly in disciplines like mobile payments and alternative channels.

The Trailblazer Awards are intended to recogniseand credit the outstanding financial institutions who drive this development and that have exhibited ahigh degree of innovation and enterprise in product development, service delivery or process improvement.

Winners are selected not only for innovative ideas; we will look at the bigger picture spanning innovativeness and application inside an organisation, overall profitability of a business line, market leadership, operational efficiency, and customer experience. We will also look at reasons why a new product or process or enhancement was developed and what problem it intended to solve.

This year made some minor adjustments, such as adding new categories such as “NFC and contactless payments”, “mass affluent banking”, or “merchant acquiring”. Due to the popularity of mobile banking and internet banking categories last year, we also decided to break these two awards into sub-categories, to get a more granular assessment in areas such as account management, sales capabilities, mobile payments, financial inclusion, and value added services.

This year we introduce a new awards categoryto merit anindividual based on his/her achievements in shaping an innovative, efficient and sustainable organisation. We invite the participating banks to nominate suitable candidateswho fitthe description of a “Trailblazer of the Year 2013”. The judges will consider all bank nominations, but will also look out for other candidates.

Owing to the increasing scope of the programme, we decided to increase the quality, credibility and transparency of our decisions by expanding our panel of judges with a number of independent industry experts. The composition of panel of judges will be announced at a later point.

Thejudges will make their decisions based on information presentedin the banks’submissions and executive interviews, and will alsotake into account corroborated facts by peers and industry experts. The winners will be announced and celebrated at a gala dinner event to be held in Singapore on 15 March 2013.

The submission deadline for all entries is 21 December 2012. Eligible for submission are all projects that have been completed within 2012.

We invite you to take part in this process and look forward to your submission.

Thomas Zink

Associate Editor

Banking & Payments Asia

Awards Categories

Trailblazers

-Most Innovative Bank in Asia Pacific

-Trailblazer of the Year 2013(new)

Product Excellence Awards

-Prepaid Payment

-Credit card

-Debit card

-NFC and contactless payment(new)

-e-wallet

-e-commerce

-P2P payment

-Payment innovation

Service Excellence Awards

-Customer experience

-Mass affluent banking (new)
(investable assets $100,000 - $500,000)

-Merchant acquiring(new)

-Service innovation

Process Excellence Awards

-Customer onboarding (new)

-Cash supply chain management(new)

-Account opening

-Loan origination

-Collection/Debt management

-Risk management

Please note:

-We only accept submissions from bank and non-bank financial institutions with banking operations in Asia Pacific.

-Submissions for Service Provider Excellence Awards must be jointlymade by a financial institution and a technology provider.

-All submitted projects must have been completed in 2012, but can have started earlier.

-Submissions should contain the following information:

  • Completed “Entry form to the Banking & Payments Asia Trailblazer Award” (page 3)
  • 2-4 images to portray the nomination should it be selected as a winner (e.g. marketing collateral, launch photos, logo)
  • A 1-page summary of your key performance indicators for nomination e.g. growth, revenue vs. target, ROI, market share

-All submissions must be made in .pdf or .doc (Word) format and images must be in .jpg or .gif format. We strongly discourage paper-based submissions. We can only accept submissions made in English.

-Shortlisted candidates may be requested for an additional interview with the executive overseeing the project.

-All information submitted is treated in strictest confidence and used for evaluation purposes only.

-VRL Financial News may produce generic reports that discuss trends and emerging best practices, but will not discuss any specific submission under any circumstances whatsoever.

-VRL Financial News may publish case studies on best practices, but will seek formal approval of the submitting institution prior to publication.

-The deadline for submissions is 21 December 2012. Extensions will only be granted in exceptional cases and in consultation with Banking & Payments Asia.

-For questions please contact Thomas Zink, , +65 6383 4688

-Please submit to .

Awards EntryForm

We warmly welcome an entry by your institution for the awards. In order to make your nomination, please complete the following questionnaire and send it to efore 21 December 2012.

Please note that we will treat the responses as commercially-confidential and not for open circulation. We will seek permission before use of individual data, beyond that for the assessment of our adjudicators’ panel:

Name of Institution: / :
Name of Team / Division: / :

Name and contact details of the executive responsible for the entry:

First Name / :
Last name / :
Job Title / :
Email Address / :
Tel. Number / :

Please respond to the following using the maximum number of words recommended.

1)Please describe the new product/service/process that you are entering into this award (max. 250 words)

2)Please provide a brief background to the project and how it originated e.g were there specific objective or market circumstances that led to the implementation? (max. 600 words)

3)Please describe the research that went into developing this innovative idea. How extensive was it and what were your findings? (max. 400 words)

4)Please provide some information as to how the whole project was managed and details on how the plans were implemented. (max 1000 words)

5)How successful was the initiative? Please outline implementation results and feedback from stakeholders. (max 400 words)

6)Please describe the competitive environment for this project and refer to similar peer initiatives. (max 400 words)

7)Please provide any other information which will help convince the judging panel that the project should win the BPA Trailblazers Award. (max 400 words)

8)Name the three most important initiatives the overall organization has implemented in 2012. Please name the three most important initiatives for 2013.Please do not highlight the pitched initiative, but other initiatives by the bank. (max 600 words)

Nomination for “Trailblazer Award of the Year 2013”

Only individuals are eligible for this award category, not institutions. The judges will consider all nominations, but will also look beyond nominated candidates to identify the real Trailblazers of today. Please make your nomination by 21 December 2012.

Suitable candidates should live up to the following characteristics:

  • Leadership skills demonstrated at the top of a retail banking or payments organisation for at least 5 years.
  • A person of highest integrity.
  • A keen sense for business opportunities and the vision to lead the transformation of an organisation.
  • A thought leader shaping the organisation and the industry as a whole.

First Name / :
Last name / :
Job Title / :
Institution / :
Years with the company / :
Email Address / :
Tel. Number / :

Please respond to the following using the maximum number of words recommended.

  1. Please provide a short bio of the candidate. (max 500 words)
  2. Please highlight the two most important achievements of the candidate throughout his/her career.(max 500 words)
  3. How has the leadership of the candidate shaped the organisation? (max 500 words)
  4. Please provide a few performance indicators showing how the organisation has grown under his/her leadership (market share growth; cost-income ratio 2010 to 2012; accumulated growth rate overmin5 years(CAGR)for deposits, loans, revenues. (max 300 words)
  5. Please provide any additional information the judges should consider in their assessment (max 500 words)

Panel of Judges

David Cavell, formerly a member of the general management team of UK Cooperative Bank, is now a freelance adviser with an exceptional expertise of distribution channels and cards. He has led or supported a range of strategy and implementation projects encompassing: branch network development; direct banking operations for consumers and SME's; and card programme development and launch. David has worked for clients in the UK, Europe, USA, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific regions, including banks, mutuals, finance companies, new entrants, and key industry suppliers. He has gained international recognition for his work, including an award for innovation in self service.

John Meinhold is a global partner in A.T. Kearney and for many years was the Asia Pacific regional leader of the firm's financial institutions group. He is based in the firm's Kuala Lumpur office. John joined A.T. Kearney in 1997 and has more than 30 years of industry and consulting experience throughout Asia Pacific. He has extensive experience assisting banks, insurance companies, and central banks with their corporate strategies and broad-based transformation programs. He also has expertise in building capabilities in specialist areas, such as risk management, treasury, and retail banking. Representative engagements include long term transformation programs at the central banks of Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia; risk management programs around Basel II across Asia; and strategy and operational improvement projects for global and domestic banks throughout the Asia Pacific region.

Richard Hartunghas over 20 years of experience in the payments & consumer financial services industry. He was part of the team that started up retail banking for Citibank in Japan. He joined MasterCard in 1993 and headed operations & systems for the Asia Pacific region. In 1999 he moved to Keppel TatLee Bank, where he launched a new credit card program that became profitable in just over one year. He also oversaw the integration of Keppelcard into OCBC Bank and was the Card Centre Manager. Today he is a cards and payments consultant working with cards and payments companies to develop business strategies, enhance payments business performance, improve acquiring practices, train staff, realign operations processes, manage risk and boost service quality.

Titien Ahmad, regional director at VRL Financial News,is a seasoned observer of the financial services industry, having covered business strategies and trends in Asia-Pacific for more than a decade. Her editorial-led understanding in wealth management, retail banking and payments brings fresh insight and insider knowledge to the table.In addition to developing and delivering thought leadership through board meetings and industry events, Titien has also led and launched several platforms for peer-sharing and industry intelligence in financial services such as thePrivate Banker International Awards,Banking & Payments Asia magazine, Financial Insights Asia/Pacific Banking Advisory and theExcellence in Retail Banking programme.

Thomas Zink is associate editor of Banking & Payments Asiaand will be heading the assessment process of the Trailblazer Awards. He has long standing experience in benchmarking and evaluating retail banks from his time as senior research analyst at The Asian Banker, where he headed the Excellence in Retail Financial Services Programmes 2011 and 2010. He has been covering retail banking in Asia Pacific for the last four years and wrote various research reports and white papers before switching to a an editorial role in VRL Financial News.

Contacts

For any enquiries about us or the awards, please contact:

Thomas Zink
Associate Editor

T: +65 6383 4688
F: +65 6383 5433 / or / Titien Ahmad
Regional Director

T: +65 6383 4688
F: +65 6383 5433

For enquiries on how to attend the Retail Banking / Payment Innovations Conference, please contact:

Christina Yeo

Head of Client Services Asia-Pacific

T: +65 6383 4688
F: +65 6383 5433

Website:

Please send your submission to:

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