Concentra Bank & Cinchy Win ‘Best Solution Provider for Covid-19 Rapid Response'

SASKATOON, SK and TORONTO, ON, December 9 2021: Concentra Bank (doing business as Wyth Financial), the leading provider of wholesale banking and trust solutions to Canadian credit unions, and Cinchy, the leading pioneer in the fast-growing Dataware space, are proud to announce they are sharing the 2021 Banking Technology Award for Best COVID Response Technology. The award, part of the 22nd annual Banking Tech Awards produced by FinTech Futures and presented at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London, recognizes excellence and innovation in the use of IT in financial services around the world. It represents a prized acknowledgement of each recipient’s skills, leadership, vision, inspiration and dedication to the Banking and Fintech industry’s betterment.

The honour is particularly noteworthy in an operating environment defined by the challenges of a global pandemic. At the outset of COVID-19, Concentra Bank—which serves more than five million Canadians through a sprawling network of credit unions—needed to distribute $200 million in COVID-19 relief loans as part of the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) program. The institution stepped up with a front- and back-end solution to roll out the relief program in just five days. It provided critical assistance to thousands of businesses and offered a platform that can be fully leveraged for similar programs in the future.

“All technology implementations are important, of course, but we’re all very aware of the damage and pain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s our responsibility to help bring relief,” said Kelly Sanheim, VP, Operational Excellence at Concentra. “Our legacy systems couldn’t scale as much as we needed, so we turned to Cinchy. We’re impressed by how its Dataware technology helped us address some issues involved in distributing CEBA funds to credit union members. The solution not only exceeded our technology needs but also provided for the complex reporting and governance required by the government. This is what true collaboration looks like, and we’re honoured to receive the 2021 Banking Technology Award for our efforts.”

The solution had to enable both applicants and credit unions to collaborate on data, as opposed to making copies and sharing it, which would expose sensitive information to security threats. The bank leveraged Cinchy Dataware to achieve full deployment in only five days, while ensuring comprehensive data security and privacy, and unlocking a 70 per cent reduction in maintenance resources. The bank distributed more than $520M to businesses in need through 80 credit unions across Canada.

“It’s been our privilege to work with Concentra Bank in this vital undertaking—we know as well as anyone the complex challenges of a new implementation, let alone during a crippling pandemic,” said Dan DeMers, CEO of Cinchy. “We see Dataware as a rapidly emerging category of data-centric technology to accelerate digital transformation and maximize data value while eliminating point-to-point integration. This was a perfect representation of those advantages, and we’re gratified by this industry recognition.”

About Concentra Bank

Wyth Financial is the trade name of Concentra Bank, a purpose-driven Schedule I bank that provides specialized banking products and services to Canadian consumers and businesses, credit unions and Fintechs. Headquartered in Saskatoon, SK, Wyth is a digital bank that helps people save money, buy a property, set up a Trust, manage an estate and grow a business. It also offers unique financial products created jointly with innovative partners.

Wyth Trust is the trade name for Concentra Trust, a federally regulated, wholly owned subsidiary of Concentra Bank. Concentra Bank has an investment-grade external debt rating from DBRS and is one of Canada’s Best Managed Companies. For more information, visit wyth.ca.

About Cinchy

Cinchy is the multi-award winning Dataware Platform used by leading organizations to reduce the cost, delay, and risk associated with traditional data and application integration and digital transformation delivery. Our technology combines an Autonomous Data Platform, Operational Data Fabric, persistence-as-a-service, Automated Data Management, domain-centric Data Governance, Active Metadata, and no-code design within a unified 'Zero-Copy Integration' architecture.

Cinchy customers—from energy, to healthcare to financial services—include TD Bank, YMCA, Collier International, Investment Quebec, +100 Credit Unions, the Mozilla Foundation, PWC and Siemens who use Dataware to enable organization-wide collaboration on data and accelerate the delivery of composable applications, automations, personalization, Digital Twins, and real-time systems.

Cinchy is self-hosted on premise or private cloud and all packages include unlimited users, solutions, upgrades, training, and support. cinchy.com