Hakan Ates, DenizBank

It's at the core of the business because the generations are changing. 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. 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, a superior experience afterwards. That's how it goes, in order not to stay behind the competition.

Actually, BAI Finnacle, actually a bank administration institute, as you well know, every year organizes such sort of activities that everybody comes together and shares 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 participant of BAI. So I consider it is like the Oscar prize of the banking sector and financial sector in general. Why? Because it's simple. Whatever comes new, comes first from BAI conferences, and Fiserv accompanies it quite good. They matched up and addressed the globe as being one of the best organizations which prepares such 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 NPL collection module, converting the zero-sum game between you and your client into a win-win game. Taking the concentration, its PD ratios, and some other ingredients put in it, and behavioral scoring — basically you come up with an idea that, okay, this client I shouldn't lose because cheapest client is the one which you have in hand. So if we deregulate 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 on the top three, I guess. Basically, all in all, 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. So we don't want to be a loser. In order to win, you have to cope up with the new technologies, new innovations, and address the best experience for your clients. 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 beauty of the human mind is 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 adjust to the customer needs proactively.