Cooperative Bank of Oromia to Accelerate Growth With Temenos Universal Banking Platform

Press Releases, October 2, 2017

Temenos – Company

GENEVA, Switzerland – October 2, 2017 – Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the software specialist for banking and finance, today announces that Cooperative Bank of Oromia (CBO) has gone live with its UniversalSuite.

As the bank increases its footprint in Ethiopia, this new technology will enable the bank’s growth strategy, supported by an agile core banking solution, powerful analytics, and a central platform to drive growth across all distribution channels. United System Integrators (USi) led the implementation of Temenos’ Core Banking platform at CBO.

Akalework Amde, Software Services Manager, USi noted:

“CBO is the first bank of its size in the region to go-live on Temenos’ Core Banking platform with a “big bang” of 256 branches and 2.5 million customers migrating from its legacy system onto Temenos Core Banking. USi, adhering to Temenos’ implementation methodology, implemented Temenos’ Ethiopian model bank, successfully bringing the bank live in four and a half months”

Since its foundation in 2004, CBO has become one of the leading private banks in Ethiopia with more than 2.4 million account holders, 256 branch networks and over 1,800 agents spread throughout the country. With plans for continued growth, the bank needed a vendor that could power the operations at their physical locations, as well as their internet and mobile channels, while also accommodating the needs of their Islamic community. On top of that, the platform would need to scale in line with CBO’s future growth, as the bank continues to expand its domestic and international lines of business.

Aman Semir, VP Information Systems at Cooperative Bank of Oromia commented:

“As a result of true teamwork between our organizations, we are very pleased that Temenos and USi have completed the implementation of Temenos’ UniversalSuite. This deployment gives us the peace of mind that we have the technology in place to meet the needs of our customers, support our growth and meet all local regulatory requirements.”

The bank’s move to replace its existing legacy systems with the Temenos UniversalSuite will support its immediate goal of providing banking solutions that create greater customer experience with emphasis on cooperatives and agro-based businesses, and it’s long-term vision of becoming the leading private bank in Ethiopia by 2025. With Temenos’ comprehensive, front-to-back digital banking solution, the bank will increase efficiency and provide an optimized customer experience across all of their market segments.

Jean-Paul Mergeai, Regional Director at Temenos stated:

“As part of our winning strategy, we continue to set new benchmarks for delivery, which we strive to beat in our quest to deliver better and faster value creation for our clients and their customers. We are delighted that Cooperative Bank of Oromia has gone live with our conventional and Islamic digital banking offering. We would like to congratulate our Ethiopian partners, USi, for the quality of their services and their expertise which led to this joint success.  This rapid deployment and “go live” demonstrates the operational efficiency of our partnership programme and our ability to quickly equip financial institutions with the right tools to transform in a market undergoing significant regulatory, competitive and customer changes.”