Submissions must be made using our clear guidelines below:

Who is eligible?
For most awards, banks and non-bank financial institutions including insurance companies, credit companies, non-bank finance companies, internet finance companies, cards associations, with retail operations in West Africa. An increasing number of financial technology companies, platform based ecosystems and other alternative retail financial services providers are entering previously bank-related products and services. These companies will be assessed alongside financial institutions.

What happens if a submission was already made during the International Programme in the product, process, digital or frictionless category?
Banks, financial institutions and financial technology companies that already made submissions in any of the awards categories mentioned to International Programme, do not need to re-submit their case. Their entries will automatically placed into the country level Excellence in Retail FS and Technology Innovation Awards 2018. The Asian Banker may however re-approach the financial institution for an update.

Will institutions that do not make a submission be considered?
We encourage all financial institutions to make submissions. However, regardless of your submission, The Asian Banker makes its own assessment based on previous interviews, industry observations and our own research. Institutions that do not make submissions risk not having complete descriptions of their programmes fully considered, but where we find worthy institutions, we will initiate our own enquiries.

Is the information submitted made available to the public?
All information submitted is treated in strictest confidence and used for evaluation purposes only. The Asian Banker publishes generic reports and normalised benchmarks that discuss trends and emerging best practices from the programme. Our published profiles of retail banks and generic reports can be found in the Retail Finance Working Group and the Financial Technology Working Group which is available through membership. However, we do not discuss any specific submission under any circumstances whatsoever.

When to submit?
To be considered for an award, a complete submission must reach us no later than Feb 28th , 2019. Winning initiatives, applications and programmes will be announced in April 2019.

How to submit?
To request the submission kit to the West Africa Awards 2019, please click here. For more information contact Mr Aman Kler at akler@theasianbanker.com