OTP Bank repeatedly wins Best Digital Bank in Hungary title

OTP Bank repeatedly wins Best Digital Bank in Hungary title

Once again this year, OTP Bank won Global Finance magazine’s World’s Best Consumer Digital Bank Award 2021.

Headquartered in New York, Global Finance Magazine ranks the best banks and financial service providers of the world based on strict professional criteria. For the 22nd time this year, it published the list of the world’s best digital banks, including those operating in the countries making up the Central and Eastern European region. Once again this year, in Hungary OTP Bank won Global Finance magazine’s World’s Best Consumer Digital Bank Award 2021.

Due to the global pandemic, digital banking activity has gained such importance and prominence that have never been seen before. This year, the award went to banks whose response to this challenge has been the most successful, and that made special efforts to develop a strategy for reaching and serving customers using digital services. Winning banks were selected based on the following criteria: strength of strategy for attracting and servicing digital customers, success in getting clients to use digital offerings, growth of digital customers, steps taken to offer attractive services suiting customers’ needs and breadth of product offerings. In addition, the panel of judges also assessed the design and functionality of the internetbank and the mobile banking platform. Award winners were selected based on the opinions of numerous corporate finance executives, bankers, banking consultants and analysts.

OTP Bank has always treated the transition to digital banking services as a priority; even before the pandemic, almost two million customers used the internetbank and/or the mobile banking application on a regular basis. By now, continuous innovation has been incorporated into the Bank’s daily operations; consequently, the acceleration of digitalisation remained typical throughout 2020 and the first half of 2021. In addition to the strengthening of the mobile banking channel, the ratio of digitally active customers and the number of digital transactions also increased significantly: in the span of 1.5 years, the number of OTP SmartBank users doubled and approaches 1.5 million users by now. During the same period, the ratio of digitally active retail clients grew by one fifth, and the digital transactions performed by them increased considerably. This meant tens of thousands of new customers banking online, and tens of thousands of additional transactions per day.

Digital developments continued without interruptions even during the coronavirus pandemic; by the end of June this year, almost 200 thousand users have registered to the Bank’s new internetbank and mobile banking application.

It is a token of OTP Bank’s commitment to digital developments that it was the first bank in Hungary to give its customers access to personal loans and consumer credits via online application, and it was also the first to introduce the ApplePay service. The credit institution puts special focus on enhancing its internet banking, SMS, call center and mobile banking services and on continuously expanding the functions of the Simple mobile application. Meanwhile, it plays a ground-breaking role in the digitalisation of branch processes; for example, it pioneers in the use of the digital signature pads in support of paperless banking and in increasing the prominence of deposit ATMs.

The activities of OTP Bank have been recognised in recent years by numerous Hungarian and international awards. The Budapest-based credit institution, which by now has become a leading participant in the Central and Eastern European region, serves more than 16 million customers in 11 countries by offering contemporary banking solutions. The bedrocks of its operation are stability and innovation.