ABOUT

The Digital Banker exists to recognise, honour and celebrate preeminent and ground-breaking financial institutions and their distinguished leadership contributions paving the way for innovative and transformative technological breakthrough that Artificial Intelligence is driving across all facets of the industry.

The Digital Banker’s Global AI Innovation Awards 2026 aims to assess and honour organisations and teams that have delivered breakthrough AI powered products and services that have enhanced operational efficiency, improved decision making with data-driven insights, rewarded customers with personalised insights and seamless experiences, led to better risk management practices and helped in operational cost optimisation. With these awards, The Digital Banker welcomes institutions that have been are the forefront of deploying AI capabilities to drive profound transformation in financial services, fostering innovation and streamlining operations.

The Digital Banker Awards are accolades of excellence and distinction attributed to outstanding players – they provide objective benchmarks for the global and regional banking industry. This program exists to celebrate the world’s most cutting-edge financial services providers that are pioneering new standards and capabilities with AI at the core of everything they have to offer, by setting new milestones by digitally transforming to deliver a consistent banking experience to all customers.

If you identify your organisation and/or professionals as industry leaders that are pushing boundaries and driving unsurpassed innovation across products and services, we welcome you to send in your nominations for the respective awards.

WHAT’S NEW THIS YEAR?

This year’s awards programme introduces a focused set of new categories that reflect the growing role of artificial intelligence in product design, risk management and organisational efficiency across the financial services industry.

Under the Product Awards, Best AI Microproduct has been added to recognise the rise of highly targeted, technology-driven financial products. This category highlights institutions and providers that are using AI to design and deliver microproducts tailored to specific customer needs, behaviours or use cases, demonstrating how advanced analytics can support more personalised and accessible financial solutions.

The Technology and Risk Awards have been expanded with the introduction of Outstanding Use of AI in KYC. This new award acknowledges organisations that are leveraging artificial intelligence to strengthen customer due diligence and compliance processes, while improving accuracy, speed and overall risk management within KYC operations.

Within the Strategy and Innovation Awards, a new title, Outstanding Use of AI for Workforce Management, has been introduced to recognise the strategic application of AI in managing and optimising human resources. This category focuses on how institutions use AI to enhance productivity, improve decision-making and achieve greater operational efficiency across workforce planning, deployment and performance management.

WHY NOMINATE?

The financial services industry continues to be reshaped by technology-driven transformation, evolving customer expectations and a dynamically competitive operating environment. At the heart of this evolution lies Artificial Intelligence, a driving force that offers unique opportunities and potential use cases that can change the way institutions and customer interact, enhance value propositions, and pave the way for future strategies with critical insights from the past. It is evident that early investors and adopters of AI are one step when it comes to not just technological transformation but also in enhancing strategic initiatives and frameworks

Importantly, the benefits of deploying AI capabilities across the institution is multi-fold right from Intelligent Virtual Assistants offering 24x7 support, personalized financial advice to advanced algorithms detecting fraudulent activities in real-time. Committed to refining existing processes to drive strategic shift, explore the high impact of AI use cases, balance potential benefits against risks, and scale innovative prototypes into robust solutions, institutions are working with a broad spectrum of AI applications. Artificial Intelligence is not just changing how financial institutions operate—it is redefining the entire concept of financial services for the digital age. If you identify your organisation as an industry leader that is pushing the boundaries and pioneering unsurpassed innovation to overcome these challenges, then we welcome you to send in your nominations.

WHO CAN APPLY?

The Global AI Innovation Awards is open to all institutions operating in the financial services ecosystem. We welcome submissions from retail & SME banks, Islamic banks, neo/digital/challenger banks, transaction banks, wealth and asset managers, private banks, insurance institutions and technology service providers. Awards winners will be announced and celebrated across The Digital Banker’s global media channels, magazine, and multi-media partner outlets.

JUDGING METHODOLOGY

Shortlisted nominees are selected on the qualitative and quantitative depth of their nominations.

The Digital Banker research team will shortlist four institutions or individuals per category, which will then be put to our impartial panel of expert judges who will undertake a rigorous audit type process to carefully select the winners.

We use a proprietary, numerical & qualitative scoring methodology which is applied to all submissions and augmented by assessment in: Product and Service Innovation, Superior Customer Experience, Financial & Market Performance and Corporate Strategy with a focus on the Digital Ecosystem powered by AI capabilities the bank has built to date.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINE

Only projects that have been completed in 2025 will be accepted. Initiation of the project can be earlier – The Digital Banker does not require a specific commencement date. In addition to this, any updates/new additions to existing projects within the said time frame will also be accepted. If a project was completed prior to 2025, the project will be accepted only if any updates have been made to it. We do not place a limit on the number of submissions per institution. Please be aware that multiple submissions by a single organisation for a single category will compete with each other. A separate submission is required for each category. Please submit all the entries on the platform by choosing the correct category and award title.

REMINDERS

Entries received after the closing date will not be accepted any under circumstances.

We may request a further interview with the executive managing the program or initiative that is being nominated. The objective of the interview is merely to gain deeper insights, (if needed) for the purposes of judging.

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