Hakan Ates, DenizBank

It's at the core of the business because the generations are changing. A baby boomer, which I'm one of the members, and then comes XYZ generations. Therefore you have to address the needs of your clients. As long as the client needs change, you have to find out what they really need and what they really want. And to address this, you have to be at the center of innovation in order to be customer-centric. So that's why we have to be the followers of innovation and let people and sponsor them to express and pronounce their new findings and new ideas, and bring it all the way to the organization to work on it and make it a customer experience as per your experience. Afterwards that's how it goes, in order not to stay behind the competition.

Actually, BAI, a physical, actually a Bank Administration Institute, as you well know, every year organizes such sort of activities that everybody comes together and share their new ideas and innovations, findings. So it was already a big laboratory for our bank for many years. I established a bank back in '97; we didn't miss any year to be participants of BAI. So I consider it like the Oscar prize of the banking sector and financial sector in general. Why? Because it's simple: whatever comes new comes first from the BAI conferences. And Pinnacle accompanies it quite well. They addressed the globe as being one of the best organizations which prepares things to incentivize and motivate all the institutions across the world to make more innovation and make our lives easier and high quality.

Actually, out of a number of projects, more than 200 I believe, 22 finalist projects were there. Five of them belonged to us. And all in all we won the first prize in one of the categories with our InterCollect, the NPL collection module that converts the zero-sum game between you and your client into a win-win game, taking into concentration PD ratios and some other ingredients, behavioral scoring. Basically you come up with the idea that, okay, this client I shouldn't lose, because the cheapest client is the one which you have in hand. So if we regulate their payments and restructure it, we can retain the client instead of taking our money and forgetting about the clients. So this was the gold medalist. All in all, the other four were also in the top three, I guess. Basically the jury showed us as the most innovative bank in the world for 2014.

So it's a big asset for our bank. My prize is really important, but it's also at the same time a liability, because we have to keep up with this level and we cannot come any lower. We don't want to be a loser. So in order to win, you have to cope up with the new technologies, new innovations, and address the best experience for your clients. And how to do it and with what tools you can succeed to do it—that's all we're looking for and going after.

The company culture is very important. Is it innovative? Does it pave the way for people to express themselves, to pronounce their ideas in an open climate? Can they discuss their things? Like we say all the time, whoever joins our company, we restart the company from the beginning with her or his new ideas. So if you welcome their new ideas and if you are ready to discuss and accept them, they are more eager to give you more from their minds. So actually it's all about the matchmaking business. Like today I also expressed during my speech, on one side the most valuable resource, that is human, on the other side the connectedness of the human mind via technology. So you have to bring them together to be a winner. Otherwise I don't see any company who might be successful without deeply looking at new age products, new age services, because service rendering is such a business that no matter which part you are dealing with, you have to address the customer needs proactively.