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OCBC is first Singapore bank to win top honours at 2016 Global Performance Excellence Awards

OCBC is first Singapore bank to win top honours at 2016 Global Performance Excellence Awards

  • 08 Nov 2016

 

Singapore, November 2016 – OCBC Bank marked another milestone in its journey towards ever-greater performance and business excellence by earning the World Class Award – the highest award tier – at the 2016 Global Performance Excellence Awards (GPEA), under the "Large Service" organisation classification. The GPEA is administered by the Asia Pacific Quality Organisation (APQO), an autonomous, scientific and technical organisation that brings together professional quality organisations from countries in Asia and the Pacific, including Singapore. For 16 years now, it has given out the Global Performance Excellence Awards – which are the only internationally-recognised honours for performance and business excellence.

To be even considered for an Award, stringent criteria must be met. An organisation must start by being a winner at its own country’s national quality awards. Then, within two years, it must be recommended as a candidate for the GPEA by that country’s national quality award organising committee. OCBC Bank qualified by first being conferred the prestigious Singapore Quality Award by SPRING Singapore in 2014, following rigorous assessment of OCBC Bank’s consumer financial services business, and then by being recommended by SPRING Singapore for the GPEA.

The organisations are reviewed by an international team of experienced examiners who assign scores and summarise the results of their assessment. The results and recommendations are then submitted to an international ‘Jury of Judges’ who make the final decision on which Award category each organisation wins.

Mr Dennis Tan, Executive Vice President and Head of OCBC Bank’s Consumer Financial Services Singapore, said: "This award is an honour for all of us at OCBC, and is testament to our commitment to high standards of service quality. This is a key milestone in our journey towards organisational excellence. Since we embarked on our Business Excellence journey in 2001, we have tightened and enhanced our processes to deliver customer-centric, useful, fast, friendly and simple service to customers. This has earned us local recognition, with our 2014 Singapore Quality Award win, but we have not stopped there. We have continued to pursue even greater heights of business excellence – and this has culminated in our earning the Global Performance Excellence Award. While the team is very encouraged by this, achieving recognition is never a means in itself. We continue to consistently and relentlessly deliver quality products and services to meet our customers’ needs. Chasing excellence is a constant journey, never a destination."

Mr Harnek Singh, President of the APQO, said: "Singapore has established itself as a leading financial centre. OCBC was amongst the first banks to win Singapore's pinnacle award – the Singapore Quality Award – recently. This speaks volumes about the visionary leadership and well-entrenched, effective systems and processes that steer OCBC's business excellence journey. With technology and innovation being increasingly a key competitive advantage, OCBC has successfully leveraged on technology and innovation as an enabler to offer innovative customer-centric offerings, cut costs, respond to changing customer expectations and create the agility needed to capitalise on opportunities in the market. OCBC has successfully offered a slew of award-winning, innovative products and services."

OCBC Bank’s strengths in performance and business excellence are underscored by a focus on customer centricity and a competency in mining customer data through analytics to deliver intelligent customer experiences. OCBC was the first bank in Singapore to offer banking facilities at branches on Sundays, developed the ground-breaking OCBC 360 account (a deposit account that rewards customers with higher interest rates for banking more with OCBC Bank) and grew its youth segment – FRANK by OCBC – through intensive data analytics and research on how youths behave and desire to be engaged.

OCBC Bank is also a leader in banking digitalisation. Over the past three years, it has introduced numerous first-to-market innovations in digital and mobile banking in Singapore to meet customers’ needs. Many of the bank’s customer touch points have been digitalised: Voice biometrics has replaced traditional identity verification when customers call its Contact Centre, the OCBC Open Account app now enables customers to apply for the popular OCBC 360 Account via their mobile phones or tablets without ever visiting a branch, and OCBC OneTouch uses fingerprint recognition to give customers quick and easy access through their mobile devices to their account balances and transactions. OCBC Bank has also launched a mobile application – OCBC One Wealth – that is a one-stop wealth management app providing customers with convenient access to market information, investment ideas, personalised alerts about their existing investments and even the ability to directly purchase unit trusts using their mobile devices.

Mr Patrick Lim, Director of Business and Service Excellence at SPRING Singapore said, "OCBC Bank’s Consumer Financial Services Division was awarded the Singapore Quality Award in 2014 for having developed innovative new banking products and customised channel delivery, enabling it to be among the top banks in the highly competitive financial sector. Its recent GPEA win highlights the bank’s dedication to achieving business excellence. Recognition at GPEA proves the bank’s ability to demonstrate outstanding management capabilities while delivering superior performance and results."


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