Innovation remains key to success. Banks blend the best of high-touch services and low-touch environments.
As the North American banking sector navigates an increasingly competitive landscape, business models must be continually refined to meet and exceed the market’s demands and provide the most comprehensive and efficient banking products for a diverse client base. Many participants have responded with significant investment in technology to fuel innovation, and harnessing artificial intelligence has unlocked seemingly limitless opportunities. Interestingly, with the rapid pace of change, banking executives may feel these technology advancements represent both the cause of, and the cure for, this hypercompetitive environment. However, the Best Bank winners in this region continue to execute a focused strategy of relentless innovation to remain competitive and propel their franchise forward.
Best Bank in North America & Canada | ROYAL BANK OF CANADA
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has positioned itself for growth with a strategy to leverage its operations more broadly across its North American franchise. This involves building on the bank’s leading positions in Canada in personal and commercial banking, wealth management, and capital markets; and continuing to refine its US business to align with its Canadian operations.
The bank’s strategy centers around its “OneRBC” mindset to better harness the power of a unified bank to serve its North American clientele. RBC is broadening client relationships to more effectively increase engagement through extensive products and services. This organic approach follows integration of the HSBC Bank Canada acquisition, which presents significant cost-savings and revenue-generating opportunities.
RBC’s US operations account for 26% of revenue and represent a key component of the bank’s strategy, particularly in commercial banking through its City National Bank subsidiary. RBC also operates a leading investment bank with substantial US operations, which accounts for 50% of RBC’s capital markets revenue, and its successful wealth management division is highly ranked among the high-net-worth segment.
nnovation is critical for realizing the bank’s goals, and RBC continues to make significant technology investments in application development and data infrastructure to identify new service opportunities, improve the client experience, increase efficiency, and more effectively manage risk.
The bank is at the forefront of AI expertise and development globally through Aiden, its AI platform for advanced analytics, custom generative AI offerings, data-driven research and insights, and electronic trading using algorithmic solutions that have experienced 28% annual growth over the past five years. Additionally, AI continues to elevate the bank’s client-service capabilities with the availability of advisers across various product channels.
Unites States | J.P. Morgan
Meanwhile, south of the border, J.P. Morgan (JPM) earned the Best Bank in the United States award, as technology advancements continue to drive growth throughout the bank. Within its Consumer and Community Banking, Commercial and Investment Banking, and Wealth Management divisions, mandates for broadening and enhancing service offerings to tap new markets, and expand the client base require ongoing development.
This involves considerable technology investments, and JPM invested $17 billion last year in products, platforms, user experiences, tech modernization, and further development of AI capabilities. The bank’s progress is seen in the 20% increase in the speed to market for new products and features over the last two years.
Ensuring the security of the enormous volumes of customer data is a top priority, and JPM is increasingly migrating this information to the cloud for efficiency as well as maintaining a strong risk and control environment. Over 50% of applications now run in the cloud, 70% of data resides there, and 80% of production applications are cloud based or housed in data centers.
Recognizing significant opportunities in the payments segment, JPM is developing blockchain technology for greater applications through its Kinexys platform to facilitate easier crossborder funds transfers, tokenize assets, and seamlessly exchange and validate financial data. Additionally, JPM is expanding its relationship with biometric verification company PopID in the development of a “pay-by-face” biometric payment solution.
