New Delhi, India 14 April, 2016— Celent (www.celent.com), a research and consulting firm focused on the application of information technology in the global financial services industry, has named Nucleus Software, a global IT products and solutions company, as a Model Bank Vendor 2016. Introduced this year, the Model Bank Vendor award is designed to recognize a vendor’s crucial role in helping clients achieve their business objectives through the use of technology or implementation excellence.

Nucleus Software stood out this year by working with a diverse set of clients to help them deliver enhanced customer service through a number of complex and challenging initiatives.

Model Bank is the main award that a financial institution can win from Celent. The program started in 2008 and is now in its ninth year. Celent seeks examples of best practices in technology usage in different areas critical to success in banking. In 2016, the competition was particularly intense as Celent received a record number of submissions across seven categories. The company recognized 18 initiatives with a Model Bank award. The winners represent a diverse group of financial institutions spanning multiple countries and several continents. In addition, since 2012 Celent has been recognizing one initiative as the overall Model Bank of the Year, the top honor.

Celent judges Model Bank initiatives on three criteria:

• Business Benefits. Celent seeks to recognize initiatives that have a clear and sustainable impact on the business — those that most clearly advance your bank’s business objectives. Therefore, this category is weighted most heavily. Project size and scope matter, and the judges pay particular attention to quantitative success measures.
• Degree of Innovation. This measure draws attention to those initiatives deemed particularly innovative for their use of technology in improving sales or service results, reducing risks or costs, or improving business processes.
• Technology or Implementation Excellence. Some initiatives are noteworthy for their extreme difficulty, complexity of technology, or implementation excellence. Celent recognizes initiatives that stand apart in this area.

Celent usually receives a number of nominations that score highly in Technology or Implementation Excellence, although perhaps not highly enough across all categories to win an award for the financial institution. Typically, such initiatives involve a technology vendor.

Model Bank Vendor is a new award introduced by Celent in 2016 and recognizes the vendor role in helping multiple clients achieve technology or implementation excellence^[1]. Celent introduced this award to extend its appreciation to the vendor community, which is instrumental in the ongoing success of the Model Bank program.

Selected examples of Nucleus Software’s expertise as technology vendor this year includes:

• Retail loan origination transformation program for an Australian bank, one of the biggest IT implementations for the bank in the last decade. The key elements included comprehensive evaluation and planning, risk assessment, stakeholder management and a smart project management approach. The program required integration with multiple third parties and Nucleus Software partnered with five other vendors for successful delivery.
• Implementation of FinnOne Neo, the flagship product of Nucleus Software, at a private sector commercial bank in India. FinnOne Neo is a comprehensive lending product suite designed to provide risk management, operational and decision-making support in lending lifecycle to banks and financial services companies. The program involved rigorous testing, assessment and integration making it a challenging experience for the combined project team.
• Development of a self-servicing channel on mobile devices for loan customers at a large bank in India. Delivering easy and instant access to real-time loan information and reports to over four million customers required a thorough application performance benchmarking.
• Implementation of a loan management product to support a digital customer experience for a Swiss Fintech company. The solution supports a fully digital, omni-channel customer identification process approved by Swiss regulators, a sophisticated instant credit decision and a consistent user journey, including an online cockpit with all relevant information about the application status, payments, reminders, insurance products, etc. The system went live in less than three months from signing the contract and has had zero unplanned downtime since then.

Celent is grateful to have been exposed to so many extraordinary initiatives and the talented individuals responsible for their success. Celent judges extend their congratulations to Nucleus Software, a deserved winner of the inaugural Model Bank Vendor award.

[1]Celent relies on the information provided in the submission forms when judging the initiatives and has not independently verified all claims by the financial institutions and their technology vendors.