By Josephine Akaerr

The Islamic Corporation for the development of the Private Sector (ICD), the private arm of the Islamic Development Bank Group (IsDBG), has launched the “ICD Finnovation Award 2020”, to recognize, showcase and encourage financial institutions that provide an outstanding solution for the financial industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented scenario for individuals, households, businesses, and institutions globally. Partial solutions at play are new financial instruments and technology. This special initiative is therefore aimed at exploring more the role of technology and innovation in providing sustainable solutions to current challenges, including those posed by COVID-19.

“Finnovation” is an online platform, “ www.InnovativeFIs.net ”, which ICD utilizes to list and highlight successful innovations of Financial Institutions (FIs) and FinTech startups at a global level.

The Chief Executive Officer of ICD Ayman Sejiny stated: “The world is currently experiencing the devastating effects of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Majority of forecasters now expect the world GDP to shrink in the coming years, and we believe that part of the solution to overcome the related challenges is through development and design of innovative solutions for businesses and economies, as well as other advanced solutions which can be adopted in banking and other finance services. As a multilateral institution, we need to encourage such innovations.”

The ICD Finnovation Award 2020 invites Financial Institutions in ICD’s FIs network in its 55-member countries to submit their proven innovation(s) that may fall in one of the following Innovation Types:

• Innovative financial products and services.
• Innovative marketing strategies that helped reach new beneficiaries.
• Innovations that improved the deployment of Islamic Financial Principles.
• Innovative Financial Technologies (FinTech) that attracted more Beneficiaries.
• Innovative internal policies and procedures that improved the financial inclusion.
• Innovative internal operational process that made operations more efficient and towards better net income.

The winners will be awarded in a very special ceremony to be organized during the Annual Meetings of IsDBG to be held in June 2021. The Annual Meetings are attended by government officials of member countries, high ranking officials and executives, with extensive media coverage through IsDBG’s network of the Islamic network of cooperative international media agencies.