Forrester is proud to announce the winner and runners-up of the 2025 Technology Strategy Impact Award for EMEA. This award recognizes organizations that exemplify high-performance IT (HPIT), continuously improving business results through technology by demonstrating alignment, trust, and adaptivity.
We would like to congratulate this year’s winner, mBank, and runners-up TBC Bank and Philip Morris International (PMI), who all stood out for their bold technology strategies, measurable business impact, and leadership in driving transformation.
mBank: Modernizing Core Banking While Accelerating Innovation
mBank earned top honors for its five-year modernization strategy, which has redefined its core banking infrastructure while enabling parallel innovation across the business. As Poland’s first digital bank, mBank demonstrated how a technology-led transformation can deliver measurable business outcomes without compromising stability or CX. Here’s what differentiated mBank and led to its win:
- Strategic alignment that drives measurable business outcomes. mBank’s five-year IT strategy initiative was fully owned by the technology division and formally approved by both the Executive and Supervisory Boards. It was designed to modernize core systems while maintaining uninterrupted business delivery. The initiative enabled the bank to replatform its retail and corporate core systems, launch a new e-commerce marketplace, and deploy more than half of its critical systems in hybrid cloud — all while preserving its top cost-to-income ratio of 28.2 percent.
- Adaptivity through phased migration and agile execution. mBank adopted a dual-shard architecture to migrate more than 6 million customers from legacy mainframe systems to a modern .NET platform, allowing gradual, risk-mitigated migration without service disruption. Agile frameworks enabled quarterly reprioritization and rapid response to external events, including the pandemic and war in Ukraine.
- Trust built on security, resilience, and responsible innovation. The bank demonstrated exceptional resilience under wartime distributed denial-of-service attacks and continues to lead in cybersecurity innovation. It launched real-time vishing protection, customer-facing cyber support services, and maintained zero compromise during red team testing. Its IT team cocreated business initiatives like an embedded e-commerce marketplace and AI-powered complaint handling, reinforcing its reputation as a trusted digital leader.
mBank’s transformation exemplifies HPIT in action, combining deep modernization with business agility,and delivering innovation at scale with trust and transparency.
TBC Bank: Reclaiming Digital Leadership Through Agile Transformation
TBC Bank impressed judges with its bold insourcing and modernization of digital banking platforms across Georgia and Uzbekistan. Faced with rising competition and delivery bottlenecks, TBC Bank reimagined its architecture and operating model to reclaim its position as a regional digital leader. Here is what made TBC Bank stand out:
- Strategic alignment that links delivery to business value. TBC Bank restructured its delivery model around Product-Aligned Teams, each with end-to-end ownership of strategic product domains. Agile governance and Lean Value Trees ensured tight linkage between business goals and technology execution. The transformation enabled TBC Bank to regain its innovation edge and deliver 30+ “first in Georgia” features in 2025.
- Adaptivity through modular architecture and agile execution. The bank replaced monolithic vendor-managed systems with a micro-frontend and microservices-based architecture. This enabled independent deployment of features and reduced time to market from nine months to under three. Quarterly business reviews and innovation funding allowed rapid pivots and experimentation, while CI/CD automation supported over 18,000 deployments annually.
- Trust built on reliability, transparency, and cultural transformation. TBC embedded DevSecOps, observability, and resilience into its delivery pipelines, achieving 99.86% service availability and reducing incident recovery time from hours to minutes. Internally, tech employee Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS) rose from 42% to 54%; externally, customer NPS reached 69% among affluent clients. The bank’s “you build it, you run it” model fostered ownership and accountability across teams.
TBC Bank’s transformation wasn’t just technical. It reshaped culture, delivery, and strategic alignment. Its success in both Georgia and Uzbekistan positions it as a benchmark for agile, adaptive, and trusted digital banking.
PMI: Scaling AI To Power Its Future
PMI demonstrated how HPIT can drive enterprisewide transformation. Through its AI@PMI program, PMI is reimagining processes across functions to support its mission of delivering a smoke-free future. PMI deserved to be a finalist for its:
- Strategic alignment that embeds AI across the enterprise. AI@PMI is embedded across all business units, with dedicated AI leads; formal objectives, goals, strategies, and measures; and shared ownership between IT, strategy, and people & culture. Every function developed an AI strategy aligned to PMI’s transformation goals, and AI initiatives are now integrated into budget cycles and long-term roadmaps.
- Adaptivity through scalable reuse and rapid experimentation. PMI is building its AI Factory, which is a reusable and scalable operating model PMI launched as an internal AI marketplace, rolling out MS Copilot to 35K employees, with 65% using the tool weekly. Emerging tech — such as agentic orchestration, digital personas, and conversational AI assistants — is actively being explored and developed for future capabilities.
- Trust built on governance, transparency, and a people-first approach. PMI’s AI governance oversees responsible development and scaling of AI solutions. PMI’s people-first approach includes workforce impact assessments, transparency hubs, and 20K+ employees trained on AI literacy. The AI@PMI team cocreates with business units and external partners, ensuring trustworthy, secure, and scalable innovation.
PMI’s AI strategy is embedded in every business unit, with dedicated AI leads and measurable impact targets. Its people-first approach and scaling of emerging technologies, including agentic orchestration and digital personas, make it a standout example of adaptive, aligned, and trusted aIT leadership.
Join Us At The 2025 Forrester Technology & Innovation Summit EMEA
The achievements of mBank, TBC Bank, and PMI will be celebrated at Forrester’s Technology & Innovation Summit EMEA, taking place October 8–10, 2025, in London and digitally. Join us to hear more about the winning organizations and explore how HPIT is driving business transformation across the region.
