The study by technology vendor GainX, conducted with the Toronto Financial Services Alliance and released during the Digital Finance Institute’s Canadian FinTech Awards, assessed the innovation capacity of Canada’s leading financial services institutions.

More than 375 executives and employees participated in the study, which captured insights on innovation derived from their respective organisations. Using GainX Insights more than 27,000 data points were analyzed, looking at the critical gains necessary for innovation and transformation, including strategy and clarity of vision, appetite for risk, digital enablement, culture, engagement and collaboration.

Key findings from the analysis include:
• While executives and employees alike indicated that becoming more innovative was a top priority, the Canadian FS sector’s capacity to achieve those goals is greatly limited.
• 77% of FSIs surveyed indicated they had no innovation process in place.
• Only half (51%) of those surveyed believed their organization to be innovative.
• 75% of FSIs do not have innovation hubs, which brings to light the broader strategic importance of a robust innovation strategy that goes beyond churning ideas through a costly, funnelled approach to commercialization.
• More than 90% of those surveyed indicated they lacked an actionable digital strategy and lacked digital enablement, representing significant barriers to innovation and growth.
• Top challenges to innovation were identified as:
   - culture — most respondents felt their organization had significant room for improvement in the areas of communication and      employee engagement related to innovation and;
  - a lack of IT systems to support rapid, purposeful innovation.