Scotiabank Invests $2.3 Million to Create Digital Banking Lab at Ivey Business School

Brian Porter, president and CEO of Scotiabank, broke the news while making the keynote address as part of the J.C. Taylor Distinguished Lecture in Finance at the school.

Porter outlined three main opportunities the lab will create: driving research and case study development on digital banking; creating internships and field study opportunities at the Toronto-based bank and its digital factory; and hosting hackathons, a digital speaker series, and an annual case competition.

"In this day and age, it's impossible to separate our digital strategy from the bank's overall strategy. Digitizing our customer interfaces, our distribution channels and our internal processes are all critical to delivering on our overall vision to provide a consistently excellent customer experience," Porter said. "We are proud to partner with Ivey to create the Scotiabank Digital Banking Lab and look forward to seeing the outcomes from this exciting new collaboration."

Continued Innovation

Scotia has spent the past year looking for ways to innovate and digitize. The jumping-off place was Kyle McNamara and Michael Zerbs being named co-heads of IT at the bank in June 2015 following the retirement of Kim McKenzie, the previous head of technology. McNamara and Zerbs were profiled by Waters for the September 2015 issue.

In October 2015, the bank announced the creation of a digital factory aimed at developing different innovations and solutions for improving the customer experience. That news was followed by the hiring of Ignacio "Nacho" Deschamps, former chairman and CEO of BBVA Bancomer, in December to serve as a strategic advisor for global digital banking to Porter.

In January 2016, the bank announced it had made a $1.54 million ($2.2 million CAD) investment for the creation of the Scotiabank Centre for Customer Analytics at Smith School of Business at Queen's University, which focus on applied research in customer analytics by university staff, students and bank employees.