Mr. Richard Haycock presented the Third IACA “Excellence in Currency” Awards at the Gala Dinner of the 2010 Currency Conference in Buenos Aires. Once again in several categories the voting was very close as the many entries were all of extremely high calibre. Many thanks go to those who sent in nominations and to the Currency News Team and the International Association of Currency Affairs Awards Committee for researching all the entries and short listing the finalists.

The 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded to Roland Tornare who recently retired as Director of the Issue Department at the Swiss National Bank (1985-2007). Roland has a long and rich experience in the field of banknote design, and a deep knowledge of the cash-cycle.
He was one of the main architects of the current Swiss banknote series, and is heavily involved in the new one under preparation.

He has acted as an advisor for similar projects in various other countries, and continues to do so to this day.

Scotland’s Clydesdale Bank was the winner of the hotly contested Best New Banknote Series Award. Early in 2009, Clydesdale announced its intention to create a new family of banknotes in celebration of the best of Scotland’s heritage, people & culture. The front of each note honours a prominent and innovative Scot while the reverse features one of Scotland’s five World Heritage Sites. The bank designed the new notes to ensure that everyone, including the visually impaired could use the notes with confidence.

The use of vibrant colours, varying banknote sizes, bold fonts, and raised bars to assist in denominating the notes has been greatly appreciated by the Royal Blind, a foundation devoted to the welfare of blind people. Runner up Awards went to the Central Bank of Armenia for the 1000,000 Dram Banknote and the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey for the new series which completed the currency reform started in 2005.


The Best New Coin Series Award went to the Royal Canadian Mint for The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Circulation Collection. In the run up to the Olympics the Royal Canadian Mint released 12 Vancouver 2010 circulation quarters (25 cents) plus two lucky loonies ($1 coins) Each individual quarter represented a different Olympic Winter sport. 

Runner up awards went to two excellent new circulation coin series, issued by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey and the Reserve Bank of Fiji.

Pixel Watermark, a development of Arjowiggins Security, won the award for the Best New Currency Feature. The Bank of Mexico’s 200 Peso note commemorates their bicentennial and is printed on paper in a vertical design format and includes the multi-tonal watermark in the form of the angel, the wing of which is created with a Pixel™ Watermark, the first time this feature has appeared in a banknote.

De La Rue’s Depth Image and Magic Varifeye® (from G&D/Louisenthal) were the very worthy competitors who both received runner up awards. Voting results were very close in this category.

The award for Best Currency Public Education Program was won by the Scotland’s Clydesdale Bank for its year long program of media communications from the launch of the initial designs right through to the introduction of the notes into circulation.

This helped to ensure both that the new notes were welcomed by consumers and readily accepted by retailers. The National Bank of Denmark and the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey were worthy runners-up.

For the first time ever we had a tied result for the Best Currency Website. IACA members voted equally for the European Central Bank and the Central Bank of Chile for the detailed currency information found on their respective websites.

Very different in their approach and perhaps the resources available for website development but both sites use video and interactive notes to help their public understand the design and security features preset.  The Monetary Authority of Singapore was a close runner up.

IACA would like to thank all our members for the high voting return and announce that nominations for the 2011 IACA Awards will commence soon via the website http://www.currencyaffairs.org.