Cambodia’s Largest Commercial Bank Sets Sights on Doubling Customer Base With Temenos Transact
ACLEDA Bank upgrades core system to meet growth trajectory
GENEVA, Switzerland – 16 January 2013 – Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the market leading provider of banking software, today announces that Cambodia’s leading commercial bank, ACLEDA Bank (‘ACLEDA’) is upgrading to T24 R12 – the latest version of Temenos’ core banking system – expected to go-live in Q1 2013.
Over the past decade, T24 has been the backbone of ACLEDA’s IT infrastructure, helping to grow its profits at a compound annual rate of 30%. ACLEDA’s work with Temenos is part of an aggressive strategy to connect with the unbanked across Cambodia – global financial indicators report that only 4% of the country’s population have a formal bank account. This figure demonstrates the huge expansion opportunities available in Cambodia for ambitious retail banks, calling for the latest in core banking technology to help manage large customer on-boarding numbers.
Originally a microfinance institution, ACLEDA evolved into a full retail bank in 2004 and now has a 238-strong branch network across Cambodia, with an asset size of $1.9 billion. Its year-on-year growth in assets has ranged between 28-46% over the last five years, averaging at 33%. ACLEDA anticipates customer acquisition to double over the next five years, adding to its existing one million account holders. Temenos played a crucial role throughout this period, providing a low cost, flexible and scalable platform that allowed ACLEDA to expand its operations and differentiate its offering, whilst extracting the operational efficiencies of this growth. Intrinsic to ACLEDA’s continuing success is T24 R12’s faster processing power, having the ability to compute larger data volumes and increase efficiencies across the business at a low total cost of ownership (TCO).
Dr. IN Channy, CEO, ACLEDA Bank, commented:
We are experiencing huge expansion opportunities to connect with the unbanked and this upgrade project is part of our aggressive strategy to do just that. Testament to our efforts, our customer base has recently hit the one million mark. We always aim to serve our customers at the highest possible standard and T24 makes this possible by providing the flexibility to react to consumer demand with functionality to support rapid product development. In turn, this increases our profitability and ultimately our loan base which will grow alongside our customer numbers – taking control of our bottom line.
We have always been an advocate for T24 and will continue to use the technology in the long-term. Our staff are very familiar with how to easily maintain the solution, increasing our efficiency levels. Unlike other international and local vendors, Temenos can get a project up and running in as little as six months – time to market being a deal breaker for a growing institution like us, which needs fast roll-outs.
David Arnott, CEO, Temenos, commented:
The key to banking the unbanked is cost of provision, rather than problems of access or demand. As ACLEDA has grown and expanded beyond microfinance to fully-fledged retail banking, T24 has enabled it to extract economies of scale, and as such, lower the cost of providing basic banking services. This has been key to ACLEDA’s ability to grow customer numbers and revenues so quickly.
ACLEDA’s accomplishments have been recognised by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its business advisory council, winning the award for growth and employment at the 2012 Most Admired Asian Enterprise awards ceremony.
David Arnott continued:
With plans in the pipeline from ASEAN to expand the Cambodian connectivity infrastructure to help support the population’s banking needs, it is the opportune time for Cambodian institutions to implement the latest core banking technology. This will enable financial institutions to promptly respond to market forces through innovation and product development, ensuring the best customer service possible and the lowest cost of provision.
Temenos Press Contacts
Scott Rowe
Temenos Global Public Relations
+44 20 7423 3857 [email protected]Gabriel Goonetillake
Edelman Smithfield for Temenos
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