Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

At a Glance

• Sets new standards for innovation as one of the first digital-only banks in Ecuador

• Plans to bring new banking services to one million existing cardholders and business clients

• Running on the Amazon Web Services public cloud provides exceptional levels of availability

• Data analytics supports development of differentiated, hyper-personalized services

Since 1968, Diners Club Ecuador has been among the premier financial service providers in South America. Part of Grupo Pichincha—one of the largest finance groups in the region—Diners Club Ecuador was the first issuer of credit cards in the country, and has since extended its services to include payments, insurance, investments and much more. The organization now serves around one million cardholders and merchants.

Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center Club Ecuador, explains: “We lead the Ecuadorian credit card market through continuous innovation and improvement. We are always focused on building lasting relationships with our clients and merchant clients, helping them at every stage of their lives.”

Tackling a fresh challenge

In recent years, a regulatory change has created a valuable opportunity for Diners Club Ecuador. The new rules allow the organization to operate as a full-service bank, rather than solely as a credit card issuer and merchant acquirer. To take advantage of the new financial landscape, Diners Club Ecuador planned to launch user-friendly banking products, including deposits, loans, and mortgages.

“We wanted to embrace a digital-first model, giving clients the flexibility to access our services online at the click of a button on a 24/7 basis. This would also make us one of the first digital-only banks in Ecuador. To broaden our appeal to new clients, we aimed to tailor our banking services to address the needs of different market segments.”
Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center at Diners Club Ecuador

Making the transition into banking would require a new technology strategy. The key requirement was a powerful, scalable core banking platform to manage transactions, ensure compliance, and support always-on digital services. Alongside this, Diners Club Ecuador looked to enhance its data analytics capabilities to enable the development of smarter, more targeted products and services.

“Exceptional performance and availability were absolute musts for our new core solution, as just one second of downtime could have huge costs and significantly damage the client experience,” adds Mónica Carrión. “We wanted to extend our use of predictive models and AI beyond credit scoring and risk management to understand client behaviors in more depth.”

Harnessing proven solutions from the market leader

After compiling a shortlist of providers that could deliver core banking and sophisticated analytics solutions in South America, Diners Club Ecuador decided to deploy Temenos core banking and Temenos Analytics running on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud.

“We noted that third parties including Gartner and Forrester ranked Temenos as the world-leader for core banking platforms. Plus, we received excellent references from other banks using Temenos solutions, which gave us confidence. Temenos could offer real thought leadership in the banking sector, too, which would be helpful as we had previously concentrated solely on the credit card market.”
Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center at Diners Club Ecuador

She continues: “Another point in favor of Temenos was their investment in research and development; we knew we were getting the best and latest banking functionality. The cloud model is part of our long-term innovation strategy, allowing us to optimize cost efficiency and outsource infrastructure management.”

Implementing high-performance cloud-native tools

Diners Club Ecuador worked with Temenos to implement and configure the core banking and analytics solutions running on the AWS cloud. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizations employed a remote working model to maintain momentum on the project.

Mónica Carrión adds: “The deployment was a steep learning curve, but Temenos offered support at every stage.”

The Users across the IT, product design, innovation, and marketing departments at Diners Club Ecuador now harness the Temenos solutions to develop digital banking services, monitor and analyze online client interactions, and process transactions. Easy to scale, the cloud-native Temenos on AWS solutions have been purpose-built to provide high levels of performance, resilience, and security.

“Our teams were very quick to get to grips with the capabilities within the Temenos solutions. We find the robustness and availability of the platform and the flexibility of the development tools very useful, which allows us to set parameters for new products and services”
Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center at Diners Club Ecuador

Bringing digital banking to Ecuador

Working with Temenos, Diners Club Ecuador is adding banking products to its existing credit card portfolio. Already, existing clients are opening bank accounts, with more services planned for the coming months. The simple, secure 100% digital banking offerings will enable users to access accounts, and check and manage transactions while on the move, 24/7.

Among the services currently under development are interest-bearing deposits accounts, advance billing services for businesses, and mortgage loans. The organization has also created bespoke lending products for merchants that enable users to sign up online with just a few clicks; within a few months, Diners Club Ecuador has already granted loans worth tens of millions of US dollars.

Mónica Carrión explains: “With Temenos, we have enhanced our value proposition, bringing user-friendly digital banking to the market. In the coming months, we aim to cross-sell banking services to one million existing clients, as well as winning new business”.

Using Temenos Analytics, Diners Club Ecuador is uncovering insights into client preferences, as Mónica Carrión confirms: “With Temenos Analytics, we can analyze clients’ purchasing habits and create more compelling and hyper-personalized banking services. This will help to inspire long-term loyalty.”

Building a more successful future

Diners Club Ecuador is also keeping a close eye on Open Banking regulations in Europe, with the possibility that the rules could soon be extended to Ecuador. If this happens, the API capabilities of the Temenos platform will place Diners Club Ecuador in an excellent position, enabling seamless third-party integrations.

“Temenos are a world-class partner. Building on our long and successful history, we see an even brighter future, with Temenos playing a key role in our evolution. We are setting the standard for finance innovation in Ecuador and within the Diners Club International franchise network globally.”
Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center at Diners Club Ecuador