At the Currency Conference's gala dinner in Singapore  on 5 October 2011, co-chairmen of the International Association of Currency Affairs, Richard Haycock and Tom Ferguson, presented the fourth IACA Excellence in Currency Awards.

For the first time, there was a tie for the Lifetime Achievement Award, which went to  Alex Jarvis, Director, Global Currency for Authentix and former General Manager of the Bank of England Printing Works (left) and Jaime Pacreu, Director General Mexico for Securency and former Director General, Currency Issue for the Banco de Mexico (right). According to IACA, all their years of dedicated service in this industry made them natural nominees for this category.

The Bank of Uganda was the winner of the Best New Banknote Series Award. In May 2010, Uganda began circulating a new family of banknotes, the first major design change in over 20 years, celebrating the country's natural, historical and cultural heritage.

Finalists in this category from a record number of entries were the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), both issuing new series earlier this year.

Hologram Industries'  DID® patch won the award for the Best New Currency Feature. This innovative OVD is now in use on the new BSP 500 and 1,000 banknotes (see left). Two distinctive colors appear at the direct reflection angle. The unique DID features consist in the permutation of the colours when the device is rotated 90°

Arjowiggins Security's Bioguard®, a substrate specifically developed for its anti-bacterial properties (and also used on the new Philippine series) and Oberthur Technologies' Securicoat®, a first level security feature consisting of two UV printed varnishes (matt and glossy) with intaglio embossing, both received finalist awards.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority's process to co-ordinate the issue of Hong Kong's new series by three different note-issuing banks won the Best New Currency Innovation, Process or Product Award. Three different banknote designers worked independently without access to each other's work, under the close guidance and coordination of HKMA. All three new issues have completely different designs but have common security features through all denominations.

Finalists for this award were the BPS C4 Autoload-Option from Giesecke & Devrient and the GS Inspector & GS Plate QC, from OeBS & Jura.

The Bank of Canada was the winner of the award for Best Currency Public Education Program where they used a very effective video to introduce the upcoming polymer note series. The video showcasing the $100 has helped prepare Canadians for a very different sort of banknote and one that promises to be easy to verify and hard to counterfeit.

Finalists in this category were the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

(Pictured holding their awards are, from left to right, Foo-Yap Siew Hong of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Gerry Gaetz of Bank of Canada and Lydia Yip of the Hong Monetary Authority). 

Last but not least, the award for the Best Currency Website went to the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic. Its website has links covering the history of the country's currency, the banknotes currently in circulation and the security features used.

The two finalists were the National Bank of Romania and the Bank of Botswana.

The awards were launched by IACA in 2007 to promote and recognise excellence in currency production, processing, management and distribution, and are sponsored by Currency News. They are open to any organisation or individual supplying products, services or systems for currency production or management. The IACA awards committee draws up a shortlist of three nominations in each category, and IACA members vote for the winners.

IACA will conduct the next round of nominations during early 2013, with the presentations of the awards planned for the Currency Conference in Athens, Greece in the May.