Mizuho Bank accelerates innovation in global transaction banking

• Mizuho Bank is looking to accelerate its digital transformation efforts with key projects to enhance operational efficiency and customer satisfaction 
• Zühlke works with Mizuho Bank's Global Transaction Banking Department to prioritise key initiatives that can position the bank as a leader in the global transaction space 
• Mizuho Bank has initiated proofs of concept (PoCs) for certain proposed initiatives, thus opening the opportunity for future implementation 

Mizuho Bank, a global leader in corporate, retail, and investment banking services, has always prioritised innovation. 

The bank’s Global Transaction Banking Department manages its corporate clients’ diverse and constantly evolving transactional requirements – ranging from cash management services and liquidity management to global trade and risk. 

Recently, the bank merged its APAC-based Transaction Banking businesses under its “One APAC Region” strategy, creating a single regional theatre of operations to drive transaction banking synergies across 14 markets. This move helped the bank to win the Best Asian International Transaction Bank award in Asia Pacific at the Asian Banker Transaction Finance Awards 2024.

To drive continuous innovation, Mizuho Bank needed to find key projects that could boost efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately modernise the bank – all to be implemented within a few years. 

Mizuho Bank partnered with Zühlke to assess and rank its current projects, while also uncovering new opportunities that could maintain its competitive edge in global transaction banking. 

Redirecting efforts towards a technology-enabled future

Zühlke supported Mizuho Bank as a strategic consulting partner, leveraging its long-standing expertise in the global banking industry to help the bank create a roadmap for future transaction banking operations. 

The collaboration focused on defining Mizuho’s desired future state and identifying the drivers of change for transaction banking workflows — particularly blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) — that would bring this vision to life. 

While Mizuho Bank had substantial internal resources to implement these new technologies, it required an experienced external partner to develop a strategic plan for seamless integration into its future business needs. 

Innovative solutions rooted in rigorous evaluation

During the discovery phase, Zühlke employed a “balanced scorecard” approach, combining extensive research, stakeholder interviews, and advanced evaluation techniques to chart Mizuho Bank’s future direction. 

Extensive stakeholder interviews were conducted to capture the challenges, goals, and expectations of Mizuho’s leadership and stakeholders, alongside comprehensive market research with Gartner reports and domain experts to benchmark against competitors and guarantee a broad, well-informed strategy. 

During the next idea generation phase, Zühlke generated a large volume of ideas that addressed the issues raised in discovery. In this phase, Zühlke employed ideation techniques that visualised solutions from multiple angles: 

• Reverse thinking, causal reasoning, and counterfactual thinking to push the boundaries of conventional problem-solving; 
• Foresight strategy development, which allowed the team to anticipate and align with emerging trends; and  
• Computational creativity, which derived novel concepts from AI-driven insights.  

Over hundred ideas emerged from this process – these were rigorously narrowed down by an Idea Assessment Framework that ensured only the most strategically aligned and impactful initiatives were presented. 

Charting a clear path towards the future of banking

The collaboration between Mizuho Bank and Zühlke has paved the way for a clear and actionable path towards Mizuho’s Horizon Two goals, equipping the bank with the strategic clarity needed to pursue these objectives with confidence in the medium term. 

Zühlke’s balanced and data-driven approach has empowered Mizuho to make well-informed decisions for a technology-driven future. From over a hundred initial ideas, four key initiatives were identified that closely align with Mizuho Bank’s goals to enhance its transaction banking processes. This led to the implementation of proofs of concept (PoCs) for these most promising initiatives improving transaction banking processes for its customers. 

Throughout this engagement, Mizuho Bank benefited from Zühlke’s insights, advice, and most notably, the company’s ability to view its challenges from an external perspective and validated by Zühlke’s domain experts. 

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