Called the IFC DigiLab for Latin America and the Caribbean, it will look toward “helping businesses respond to new digital trends in the market, while leveraging the latest technologies with the dual goals of expanding their business and promoting financial inclusion.”

The initiative is yet to begin but will launch in the first half of the year, according to the institution.

The first program will kick off in partnership with Accenture and will focus on financial technology, including applications of analytics, big data, and cloud computing with an emphasis on mobile.

Through meetings, regional innovation submits, visits to similar labs, and collaboration through online platforms, the DigiLab will also also prioritize helping participants advance their overall digital banking strategy and understand the benefits of partnering with fintech firms.

Paulo de Bolle, global industry director for the global financial institutions group of the IFC, said that the goal is to “offer innovative, creative, and market-driven capacity-building projects” to help industry firms develop commercially viable projects that can serve “underbanked citizens in ways previously hard to imagine.”

(Photo credit: Addy Cameron-Huff)

Of this total, about 80% (320 billion pesos) will be devoted to operations in Colombia with the remainder being allocated for Bancolombia assets in Panama, Guatemala, and El Salvador, specifically for its Banistmo and Banco Agrícola holdings.

Colombia’s largest bank, which brought in a net profit of around 910 million USD (2.6 trillion pesos) last year, plans to focus its digital transformation efforts on increasing its mobile and digital service offerings as well as enhancing digital security.

Though online and digital banking has continued to rise in the Andean nation in recent years, penetration still lags below the United States and Europe. Despite the challenges, roughly three million of the Medellín-based banking group’s customers in Colombia have used the its mobile app and around 80% of transactions are now conducted digitally, according to Bancolombia.

“That only means one thing: the world is changing and we see it clearly,” said Juan Carlos Mora, president of Bancolombia.

“We have been adapting to an economic reality,” he added.

READ MORE: Bancolombia Has Introduced New Tabot Chatbot in Digital Transformation Effort

The work in new solutions using artificial intelligence and cognitive capabilities will be done largely in the company’s “Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence,” which was launched last year.

The center will be key to continuing to advance Bancolombia’s Tabot customer service chatbot that, which can respond to requests through Facebook Messenger, and its Invesbot robo-advisor resource that has so far “facilitated” more than $22 million (63 billion pesos) in investments, said the bank.

The Medellín-based bank, the largest in Colombia, says that the goal of introducing fingerprint ID is to make the app both easier to use and more secure for its customers.

To access the new biometric functionality, users just need to go to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store to update to the latest version of the app (or download it for the first time). Called “Billetera Móvil Bancolombia,” it can store debit, credit, and other payments means on the bank client’s mobile device to be used for digital payments.

READ MORE: Bancolombia Goes Digital to Streamline International Bank Transfer Process

Registration for the fingerprint identification option only requires an initial activation through a prompt from the app while the user holds their finger on the device.

According to Bancolombia, the firm’s mobile wallet app is currently used by more than 200,000 people in Colombia.

(Photo credit: relexahotels / Pixabay)