WEIR, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Weir, Kan.-based CBW Bank has been named the “Most Innovative Community-Based Banking Organization” by BAI in this year’s Global Banking Innovation Awards. Additionally, the bank was recognized as a finalist in the “Innovation in Payments” category. Winners were announced at BAI Beacon in Chicago.
Since 2011, the BAI Global Banking Innovation Awards program has connected forward-thinking financial services organizations and leaders who are changing the face of the industry and positively impacting profitability, efficiency and customer experience. The awards are designed to recognize companies that have introduced products, services or processes that provide substantial benefit to the organization or customer base. To date, the awards program has received thousands of nominations from financial services organizations all over the world.
Renowned for modernizing the payments process and proving that even small community banks can disrupt the industry, CBW Bank is capable of processing real-time, contextual and conditional payments across multiple channels. To accomplish this, the bank completed one of the first bank account overhauls in nearly a decade. This involved designing a new bank account structure, rebuilding critical payment channels and embedding a real-time risk management platform. By leveraging this proprietary digital banking infrastructure, CBW Bank has reduced the time to deliver a payment from three days to one minute and payments can be sent 24x7, 365 days a year. Additionally, the bank can now rapidly introduce new payment products while satisfying regulatory requirements and has improved its ability to prevent fraudulent transactions.
CBW Bank’s capabilities are driven by modern APIs. This enables the bank to rapidly construct a diverse range of business and consumer products while maintaining tight compliance oversight. Additionally, CBW Bank has published its APIs, becoming the first bank in the U.S. to do so, allowing fintech startups and progressive financial institutions to use its API-enabled platform to validate new, innovative services and products while ensuring compliance.
“Our platform’s use of APIs and a real-time risk scoring engine will empower the development of the next generation of banking services for consumers as well as a wide range of business verticals,” said Suresh Ramamurthi, chairman and chief technology officer for CBW Bank. “CBW Bank’s new account structure embraces compliance as a feature, enabling the bank to focus on delivering new, relevant products without taking on inordinate risks. We can now send faster payments because the risk aspect was addressed from the beginning of the project, which creates infinite opportunities to deliver new digital banking and payments products to market.”
CBW Bank has received several other recent accolades, including recognition by financial services research firm Celent as a 2016 Model Bank and was honored by Bank Technology News for completing one of the Top 10 Community Bank IT Projects. Ramamurthi has also received various awards for leading CBW’s initiative in transforming the payments process. Earlier this year, he was named one of American Banker’s 2016 Digital Bankers of the Year and was also named in Bank Innovation’s 2016 Innovators to Watch. Additionally, Ramamurthi was honored as American Banker’s 2015 Innovator of the Year.
About CBW Bank
CBW Bank was founded in 1892 in Weir, Kan. In 2009, it was acquired by its current management team. With rapidly evolving technologies and regulations, CBW Bank anticipates, in conjunction with its partners, developing and launching products and services that leverage these changes and innovations to serve its customers better. For more information, visit www.cbwbank.com.
