Toronto-based Bank of Nova Scotia is providing $3 million in funding to create the Scotiabank Digital Banking Lab at Western University in London, Ont.
Brian Porter, the bank’s president and CEO, made the announcement during his keynote address to students of the university’s Ivey Business School on Thursday.
The lab is a partnership between the bank and the business school that will produce research addressing the impact of digitalization and disruption in the financial services sector and provide students with internships and field studies at Scotiabank and its digital factory in Toronto.
“In this day and age, it’s impossible to separate our digital strategy from the bank’s overall strategy. Digitizing our customer interfaces, our distribution channels and our internal processes are all critical to delivering on our overall vision to provide a consistently excellent customer experience,” says Porter in a statement.
“We are proud to partner with Ivey to create the Scotiabank Digital Banking Lab and look forward to seeing the outcomes from this exciting new collaboration,” he adds.
This is an opportunity to produce homegrown Canadian innovation to address the challenges facing the financial services sector, says Robert Kennedy, dean of the Ivey Business School, in a statement.
“I’m excited to launch a partnership with Scotiabank, an organization with a reputation as a global leader in emerging digital business issues,” he says. “Our partnership will help to shape the future of finance and banking, advance academic and practitioner research and provide exciting learning experiences for Ivey students.”
This announcement is the latest in a string of initiatives encouraging digitalization at the bank. Scotia announced the creation of its customer analytics centre at Kingston, Ont.-based Queen’s University and the appointment of Ignacio “Nacho” Deschamps as group head of international banking and digital transformation in February. The bank also announced in October that it would open a stand-alone digital factory in Toronto in mid-2016.
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