Portland, Ore. (Oct. 12, 2020) – The International Institute for Analytics (IIA), the leading independent analytics and data science research and advisory firm, named Ally Financial, Charles Schwab and Cleveland Clinic as the winners of the coveted “ANNY” award in 2020 for excellence in analytics at IIA’s Virtual Analytics Symposium held online on Wednesday, October 7, 2020.

“Despite the upheaval across all facets of our lives in 2020, the analytics and data science teams inside the worlds’ leading enterprises have continued to bring clarity and precision to the big decisions firms are making this year,” said IIA’s CEO Jack Phillips. “The teams at Ally Financial, Charles Schwab and Cleveland Clinic excelled across all five of our evaluation criteria…particularly scale and ambition. We are delighted to recognize all three organizations in this unusual year.”

All applicants competed on the five key areas that determine the success of an analytics project: outcomes, ambition, scale, skills, and insights. Franks led a panel of judges who examined each application and cast anonymous ballots.

Upon receiving this honor, said Marcos Souza, Head of AI and Advanced Analytics at Ally said, “We’re grateful to be honored by IIA with this year’s ANNY award for advanced analytics. Doing it right for our customers is Ally’s brand promise and our Data to Intelligence project supports that customer-first mindset.

Scott Richardson, CIO, Enterprise Data and Analytics at Ally, added, “The intention behind the Data to Intelligence project was to help our customers’ improve their financial well-being. We’re happy that those efforts are recognized as industry leading, and we’ll continue to seek innovative ways to put our customers first.”

Tony Cyriac, Sr. Vice President and Head of Data, Analytics & Insight for Schwab said, “We are delighted to receive this honor, but the real win here is for our clients. We are proud of the focus and progress we are making to put data to work to improve our clients’ experience and anticipate their needs. In order to serve our clients holistically across business lines and channels, we must analyze their journey in the same manner in which they live it: they experience Schwab as a single entity regardless of whether they are trading, opening a brokerage account or resetting a pin on their debit card. Our goal is to meet clients where they are and help them accomplish what they need to do as quickly and seamlessly as possible.”

Chris Donovan, Executive Director, Cleveland Clinic Enterprise Analytics, said, “We are delighted to receive this honor and very humbled to be in the company of such outstanding finalists. Building and leveraging analytics capabilities will continue to be instrumental in helping us address the ongoing challenges presented by COVID-19.”