Regulators cracked down in 2018 and startups surfaced en masse, forcing the region’s private banks to innovate or risk succumbing to the effects of disruption. Unperturbed, Credit Suisse continued laying down a trail of digital firsts not only in Asia’s banking space but globally, steadfast in its philosophy of prioritising clients and stakeholders through in-house solutions and game-changing partnerships.

The highlight of Credit Suisse’s 2018 digital journey was pilot launching its Credit Suisse Chat application on Apple Business Chat and, in the process, becoming the first private bank globally and the first bank in Asia to utilise Apple Business Chat for RM-client communication. Following a paperless onboarding process, the bank’s private clients will be able to open accounts, place orders, and receive advice via their mobile devices, while advisors access the discussion through CS Chat’s RM dashboard, from where the bank is able to archive the regulatory compliant exchanges.

Meanwhile, Credit Suisse’s Digital Private Banking platform continues to grow from strength to strength, offering clients access to a wide range of digital services from risk analysis to FX and equities trading to market news and research. Last year, the digital platform saw a 150% year-on-year increase in trading volume, FX trades doubled, and one-third of the bank’s equity trades in APAC took place via the platform.

The bank also rolled out its Credit Suisse Invest offering to more locations last year. Since 2017, the solution has helped to generate over 100,000 ideas, and as at end-September 2018, AUM has tripled year-on-year. In addition to supporting its in-house engineering team, Credit Suisse maintains an agile business model in order to promote the development of partnerships, such as its notable work with Canopy. Last year, the bank rolled out the account aggregation tool in Hong Kong and also recorded increased client wallet share as well as stronger overall performance amongst its Canopy clients.

Meanwhile, the bank’s RMs enjoy continued access to the RM Ecosystem, which consolidates critical info and insights required to effectively service clients. And overall, employees at the bank were spared a combined 10,000 hours of manual processing over the year thanks to the bank’s RPA system which so far employs 28 bots which utilise NLP technology and are equipped with IBM DataCap’s OCR and ICR capabilities.

By maintaining a proud engineering culture and marrying IT and business to develop groundbreaking platforms, Credit Suisse continues to push the boundaries on what it means to bank in the 21st century.

Credit Suisse is Asian Private Banker’s Best Private Bank – Digital Innovation for 2018.