Banks combine the best of high-touch services and low-touch environments.
For North America’s Best Bank winners, aggressive innovation is the catalyst for their banks’ growth and permeates every aspect of their business. Focusing on improving engagement with new and existing customers is a critical component of their expansion strategy, and these banks are increasingly relying on integrating a growing suite of digital banking solutions to achieve widespread customer adoption. This involves developing targeted products with robust functionality and effective customer support. As banks create more efficient products using increasingly self-service or automated applications and platforms, maintaining high levels of service while deepening customer connections becomes an ongoing challenge. Many banks have successfully integrated online virtual assistants into their platforms to solve this problem. These institutions strongly support social and environmental issues within their mandate. They have invested significant resources in developing extensive programs that provide affordable and sustainable financial solutions in their communities.
| Best Banks in North America | |
|---|---|
| Canada | Scotiabank |
| United States | Bank of America |
Regional Winner
With a constant focus on learning how clients manage their finances, Bank of America (BofA) returns for a third year as a Best Bank in North America as well as the United States, continuing to develop industry-leading banking applications for retail and business customers, including programs for underserved segments.
BofA recently introduced a powerful digital platform that combines five existing banking, investment and retirement apps into one. This provides a simplified dashboard view of all client accounts with access to a full range of personalized digital offerings based on each client’s financial needs. BofA’s successful rollout of innovative products resulted in an 11% increase in digital interactions in 2023 and strong adoption rates in consumer banking (77%), wealth management (84%) and business clients (75%).
Automation has improved service efficiency, especially with Erica, the bank’s virtual financial assistant, which grew 12% in activity in 2023 to 18 million users. The bank has integrated this feature into its CashPro commerce application, which now solves 43% of customer queries for the 40,000 customers who use CashPro to manage their treasury transactions.
The Bank reaches underserved communities through impactful and targeted programs, including the recently launched Bank of America Breakthrough Lab, an accelerator program for early-stage startups from underrepresented communities. The program provides mentorship, digital experience and networking access to potential investors. BofA has exceeded $500 million in commitments to support minority and women entrepreneurs through investments in more than 1,000 companies in 40 states. In partnership with the U.S. Community Reinvestment Fund, BofA launched the Access to Capital Connector, an online platform that connects entrepreneurs and small businesses with business support organizations. These initiatives make BofA a leading small business lender with a $43.7 billion loan portfolio supporting 11 million customers.
Meanwhile in Canada Scotiabank continues to build on its successful banking platform by introducing new consumer, commercial and business wealth management applications for the North American market.
The Bank has developed a company-wide strategy to accelerate this progress and improve efficiency by maximizing capital to improve the scale of its operations, deliver high-quality offerings and experiences, simplify its product portfolio across platforms and improve efficiencies, and further develop its workforce.
This strategy includes developing Scotiabank’s robust digital capabilities and adoption rate as a key component. Scotiabank operates Tangerine, where 97% of all sales are done digitally. Active mobile users have grown to 81% of customers, and digital sales account for 51% of total sales.
In an effort to gain more wealth management assets, Scotiabank launched Smart Investor in 2023. This digitally enabled investing platform combines AI-generated recommendations and personal advice for creating and monitoring financial goals. The program’s strong momentum resulted in an increase in assets of 378,000 new accounts by C$13 billion (about US$9.5 billion).
Additional platforms include the Scotiabank Developer Portal, which helps business banking clients access application programming interfaces (APIs) and embed banking and payment services into their own business processes and platforms. Scotia TranXact allows commercial customers to access Scotia APIs for cash management and payments; while ScotiaRISE is a program for members of low-income communities that has invested C$102 million towards a target of C$500 million by 2030.