At a Glance

• 140% growth in client base in the first six months since deploying the Temenos solutions
• Cuts fully compliant client onboarding from 5 days to 10 minutes for individual clients and one day for businesses
• 100% increase in client satisfaction thanks to enhanced services and faster transaction times
• >50% lift in operational efficiency saves employees many hours for more productive working
• Deployed multiple Temenos solutions all at once in 9 months

Hamilton Reserve Bank combines the investment and banking expertise of Wall Street with a strong British heritage. Since 1994, the bank or its affiliates have offered a wide range of integrated services to personal and business clients, including private and business banking, wealth management, trust and escrow services, family offices, investment banking, and new business formation. Accepting deposits in ten global currencies, Hamilton Reserve Bank is a truly global institution with offices and representatives around the world.

Claire Robinson, Senior Compliance and Risk Officer at Hamilton Reserve Bank, explains: “We are headquartered on a sprawling bank compound in Saint Kitts and Nevis, the birthplace of America’s founding father Alexander Hamilton. Our staff comes from 8 countries and speaks 11 different languages. We serve clients in 150 countries and are always looking to expand through advanced financial technology. For example, we have a subsidiary bank in the Far East as well as presence in the middle east, North and South America. Across all our operations around the globe, we pursue a client-first philosophy, working tirelessly to improve the prosperity of the individuals and businesses that rely on us daily for their banking needs.”

Hamilton Reserve Bank strives to create products tailored to meet the unique requirements of its global clients. Similarly, the bank aims to make every client interaction an easy, frictionless experience—from onboarding to payments and online account access; all backed up with robust security and compliance measures. The bank’s previous technologies were not meeting customer needs.

“Our previous core banking tools lacked flexibility and had limited integration capabilities,” adds Claire Robinson. “As a result, key processes such as manual client onboarding could take several days for staff to check and screen account applications. As customer onboarding exploded, we had to scale our global operations through a fresh approach. The flexible Temenos modules became our solution.”

Targeting full-scale systems modernization

Hamilton Reserve Bank planned a comprehensive overhaul of its core and client-facing solutions. From an internal perspective, the bank decided to introduce straight-through-processing (STP) to improve the speed and efficiency of back-office workflows. Similarly, the bank knew that more sophisticated authentication tools would achieve stringent compliance targets and mitigate operational risk.

“For new clients, we targeted a streamlined application journey that they could complete onboarding without fuss in just a few clicks within minutes and we wanted to enrich our service portfolio, adding advanced functionality such as real-time payments and 24/7 digital account access.”
 

Claire Robinson, Senior Compliance and Risk Officer at Hamilton Reserve Bank

Deploying fully integrated Temenos solutions in rapid time

To support a rapidly expanding global clientele, Hamilton Reserve Bank looked for a technology partner with market-leading core and digital banking solutions. After analyzing many vendors, the bank selected Temenos to concurrently deploy Temenos Transact, Temenos Infinity, Temenos Payments, and Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation—providing end-to-end capabilities covering product development, client acquisition, risk management, and more.

“Temenos offers an outstanding breadth of functionality that has helped improve our operations and grow client base. It allowed our bank to integrate with many other fintech solutions, giving us an added layer of flexibility and agility. We also love that Temenos is continuously upgrading and enhancing its solutions, and how open and responsive they were during the initial engagement.”

Claire Robinson, Senior Compliance and Risk Officer at Hamilton Reserve Bank

Launching Temenos, Hamilton Reserve Bank dedicated a large IT budget and went live in just nine months. The bank harnessed resources from the Temenos Learning Community (TLC) to train employees, as Claire Robinson explains: “The TLC provided excellent learning tools that enabled us to build a thorough knowledge of the solutions quickly despite the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and has facilitated adoption among our staff.”

Delivering ultra-secure, tailored banking services

Powered by Temenos, Hamilton Reserve Bank was able to achieve new milestones including its recent expansion into the U.S. market by acquiring a U.S. bank through a subsidiary, gaining direct access to processing U.S. dollar payments in lightning speed through the U.S. Federal Reserve via SWIFT and Fedwire.

“Temenos has made it possible for us to process USD payments in real-time while we fully comply with regulations around the world.”   

Using Temenos Transact and Temenos Infinity, Hamilton Reserve Bank has completely consolidated its back-office operations and digital banking services into a highly efficient platform. The solutions enable the bank to automate many processes and offer clients instant, round-the-clock anytime banking access, as well as a wider range of customized products. For example, the bank is developing new wealth management solutions using Temenos Enterprise Wealth in collaboration with leading U.S. securities custodian firms.

With Temenos Payments, Hamilton Reserve Bank now has the capabilities to offer fast cross-border payments to its global clientele. We process millions in client transactions every year. Temenos Payments gives us the scalability and sophisticated functionality that we need to provide real-time payment options and to handle huge volumes of transactions quickly, efficiently, and securely”

Claire Robinson, Senior Compliance and Risk Officer at Hamilton Reserve Bank

Furthermore, Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation (“FCM”) module enables Hamilton Reserve Bank to scan all account applications and transactions in real-time, using powerful artificial intelligence such as facial recognition technology to detect potentially suspicious activities and timely file regulatory reports as needed. The FCM solution has allowed the bank to pinpoint compliance risks and reduce the cost of compliance.

Ms. Robinson notes: “We have automated all client screening processes with Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation, helping us to detect potential compliance issues in real-time. As we continue to fine-tune our anti-money-laundering rules within the FCM module, we are seeing a very low false-positive rate.”

Enhancing the client experience

Thanks to Temenos Infinity, Hamilton Reserve Bank has significantly accelerated onboarding. Back-office automation and a streamlined online application process have improved the efficiency of onboarding by at least 90 percent. Applications from businesses that previously took five days to process are now completed in one day. For personal banking clients, the process is even faster: applicants may finish the whole journey online in as little as ten minutes.

“Our enhanced services and online experience have led to excellent client feedback. We have seen a 100 percent increase in our satisfaction ratings since Temenos was installed, with clients valuing the greater flexibility that we now offer. While banking online in a totally secured environment, self-directed customer transactions including internal transfers can be achieved in minutes.”

Claire Robinson, Senior Compliance and Risk Officer at Hamilton Reserve Bank

The partnership with Temenos has also enabled Hamilton Reserve Bank to accomplish its growth objectives, with a 140 percent increase in client growth within six months after the implementation. The move to a modern, scalable suite of core and digital banking tools provide a robust foundation for rapid international expansion as the bank is currently experiencing.

“Working with Temenos makes us a highly competitive leader in the global financial market, with a strong value proposition and high quality of service for our personal and business banking clients,” confirms Claire Robinson. “Harnessing the Temenos solutions has positioned us as a leading innovator bank and helped us to become the largest global bank headquartered in the Caribbean.”

Streamlining back-office workflows

The adoption of Temenos solutions has unlocked major efficiency and productivity gains for Hamilton Reserve Bank. Product teams now build and launch tailored services faster, while automating screening and compliance tasks has freed employees from repetitive manual work—saving time for more valuable activities while eliminating human errors. Overall, the bank believes the Temenos system has improved internal efficiency by more than 50 percent, helping to reduce operational costs significantly.  

Claire Robinson concludes: “Temenos is an excellent core banking product. The solutions provide a fully integrated digital ecosystem that enables us to deliver client-centric services to our rapidly expanding global customer base. Temenos is now integrated into our marketing programs for client origination and customer satisfaction. As we undertake additional Temenos module enhancements, we are looking forward to working with Temenos for many years to come.”

Temenos Ambassador Awards 2022

Delighted to recognize Hamilton Reserve Bank as one of the winners of the Innovation Hero Awards for deploying an innovative and impactful project, using a Temenos solution.

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