Ualá is an Argentine fintech, with a mission to improve financial inclusion across Latin America. Through a mobile application linked to an international Mastercard card, users can carry out a wide variety of financial transactions in an easy, secure, and transparent way. This includes money transfers, payments, credit and investment options, and access to a loyalty program. It also offers a range of solutions for businesses, such as payment terminals, payment links, and payment integration with online stores.

Ualá has more than seven million users in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico. In 2021 it was valued at $2.45 billion, following the largest investment round ever secured by an Argentine company. It followed this up in 2023 by securing a full banking licence. Consequently, it wants to move away from a partnership model (where it licensed third-party products) to develop and launch its own banking services.

Plan for growth

For Ezequiel Mina, Chief Technology Officer at Ualá’s Mexican business, this progress mirrors the marketing strategy they are now employing. “A large portion of the Mexican population still can’t access a bank account or credit products. Our aim is to introduce these people to modern finance through a debit card or investment product first. They will then be able to build a credit history, and so unlock credit options.”

Innovation at the heart

While innovation is key to this vision, it does not represent a challenge in the way it would for traditional banks.

Ualá’s track record speaks for itself. It was one of the first financial companies in Latin America to offer fully automated onboarding and a digital debit card, and to understand the benefits of building native mobile applications. “It’s all about simplicity,” says Ezequiel. “How can we make things as easy as possible for people? There are always improvements to be made. That’s why we are always innovating.”

Time to move

In May 2023, Ualá signalled its ambition to grow by acquiring ABC Capital, at the time one of Mexico’s prominent retail banks. The opportunity also presented a challenge, recalls Ezequiel. “ABC had been running a 10-year version of Temenos Core (R13), which wasn’t going to handle the transaction volume that we expect to see in the next five years.”

Hence Ualá is now in the process of upgrading to the R24 version of Temenos core banking, and also extending the platform to its established business in Mexico. It is also moving from on-premises to a cloud deployment, with AWS providing the infrastructure. Go-live is expected in 2025. Key to that decision was the agnostic architecture of the Temenos platform.

Unleashing the new

As well as improving transactional volumes, the upgraded platform provides a range of features that are not available from the legacy version. Automation is also a key stepchange that Ezequiel is looking forward to embracing.

A shared future

For all the excitement around the potential of the platform upgrade, Ezequiel equals Temenos’ people just as much. “At Ualá, we say we don’t have vendors, just strategic partners. And with the core platform at the heart of our bank, Temenos is and will be one of our most important partners for the foreseeable future. They are already proving this in their support of the upgrade project.”

Texans Credit Union provides a full suite of financial products and services, including across digital and mobile channels. Launched in 1953, today it has more than 120,000 members across Texas, including the employees of the state’s 100 largest businesses. It operates 11 branches, and manages over $2.1 billion in assets.

For JJ Bai, Vice President of Programming at Texans Credit Union, growth has been achieved with the ability to stay in step with what their customers need. “There are always uncertainties in financial markets. Our job is to forecast the weather and prepare for the financial storms, when they come. It’s about creating opportunities while others are managing the chaos.”

Opening ecosystems

Technology has been key to this strategy, says JJ, and in recent years has taken the form of APIs and SDKs that allow Texans to develop and customize solutions. “APIs and SDKs…these are the fundamentals of open banking, which has become critical to competitiveness. Temenos has very comprehensive Rest APIs, which has really opened the door to custom development. That’s why the partnership has become so important.”

Texans started working with Temenos in 2011, deploying Loan Origination and Collections. One impact of the API architecture has been in connecting with third-party loan providers that may offer more suitable products to their members, . “Before, we would not have been able to accommodate these applicants. Now, we have a lending ecosystem that can serve them.”

Faster lending

The improvements continue to come. “Recently, we used the Temenos SDK to revamp the virtual capture aspect of our loan applications” says JJ. “It cut loan application times to just 2.5 minutes from 7 minutes, which led to an increase in loan volumes by 35% in the first three months, which is phenomenal.” A high NPS score of 82 is further evidence that the improved customer experience is working.

JJ explains that this has repercussions beyond the loans business.

Cross-selling and digitizing

He also points to the development of a new loans ancillary product that enables advisors to cross-sell debt protection add-ons, such as gap, warranty insurance, and multishield. It alone has API integrations with five different vendors.

The new loans ancillary product also brings improvements to the back-office by automating process flows. “It has been overwhelmingly positive with our test group, so we are now rolling it out to all our advisors.”

Green and flexible

Innovation at Texans is increasingly approached through the lens of environmental sustainability – and to that end, JJ is looking at migrating Loan Origination and Collections from on-premises to cloud, either privately-hosted or in SaaS mode. Alongside the green benefits of moving to cloud, there are also operational gains.

JJ has the ‘dev and test’ flexibility of cloud in mind with plans to expand Texans’ lending portfolio. One is a lease-like vehicle loan product with a balloon payment feature; and also new credit card options. He expects this can be replicated to other areas of the credit union.

Indispensable

This future planning speaks to the confidence that Texans has in Temenos. “Flexible, expandable, scalable, reliable – this is how we think about Temenos,” says JJ.

All In Credit Union started as the Army Aviation Center Federal Credit Union in 1966. Today it is a full-service financial institution, serving both retail and business sectors. It offers a wide range of banking, credit, savings and insurance services. It operates 35 branches located across Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and Mississippi. It has 190,000 members and more than $3.3 billion in assets and is ranked among the best credit unions in the US, with a 5-star rating from BauerFinancial.

Growth by Passion

Melanie Robinson, Recovery Solutions Manager at All In CU, says growth over the last 58 years comes down to one thing. “We are passionate about our members and give them everything they need – products, experiences and help – to make their lives better.”

While this passion has been the goal of All In CU since its inception, it has proved more challenging in recent years, explains Melanie. “With the economy here underperforming, many families and communities are increasingly struggling to achieve financial security. Education has become more important to what we do.”

Connected

That ability – to constantly stay ahead of the curve – is really how the credit union defines innovation, she says. APIs have become core to that, using them to connect with other internal systems and third-party solutions: SWBC, FICO (data analytics), and PSCU (MasterCard program administrator), for example.

Consolidated

All In CU has been working with Temenos since 2017 to deliver on its innovation strategy. “Our previous collection software did not have everything we needed, including connectivity to our core platform, so it was limited in scope to just the delinquent loan part of the business. We wanted a solution that could also work across all the other areas of our collections operation, such as negative checking accounts, auto loans and credit card late payments. We chose Temenos because it offered that consolidation.”

One benefit has been in the customer experience.

Experts Not Required

That switch has been enabled by the usability of the software, says Melanie “Configuration doesn’t require any technical experience, and the interface is very intuitive. I remember when we first deployed Temenos, I was there doing the configuration for our go-live, and I was amazed how easy it was to just tailor everything to our needs. We could set up a workflow for this function or set up cases for this function. It just turned our world around.”

This is replicated whenever a new starter joins the team. “They can get up to speed really quickly. They learn how to use Temenos faster than any other solution we have.”

Ease of use, together with the decision to deploy Temenos in the cloud, has had a knock-on benefit to the rest of the business, explains Melanie.

This echoes her experience during the go-live phase. “Our Temenos consultant gave us great advice about who and how to train on the new system and explained all the functionalities. And he encouraged us to be proactive with questions and ideas. I’d share that advice. It’s no good having some of your people using the system effectively and others not.”

Time is Money

The impact of Temenos on the credit union can be measured in time, says Melanie. “Time is money. So, when you’re able to do something faster, it has a financial implication. And that’s precisely what we’ve achieved. Before Temenos, we worked late into the night – up to 9:00 p.m. – with paper files. Now, our day ends like a regular day should at 5:00 p.m.”

It has also had a positive impact on performance management. “From the platform, I can see which members of my team are performing at their best or who needs a little help.”

One Step Ahead

Always with one eye on the future of All In CU, Melanie explains that Temenos’ API architecture and established relationships with other financial software vendors, instills confidence that the platform can keep delivering.

Vantage Credit Union is headquartered in St. Charles, Missouri. It began as a credit union for teachers and the broader education sector, but has since expanded its base to all residents of the Greater St. Louis area. Today it has almost 70,000 members, and offers a full suite of financial services, including banking, credit, investments and insurance. Vantage has enjoyed excellent growth in recent years. Revenues in 2023 were up to $67.3m from $50.5m in 2021. It has almost $1.2bn in assets.

Community First

For Matt Stegall, Vantage’s Assistant Vice President of Credit Resolution and Recovery, this growth has been the result of “strengthening community ties by delivering convenient, confident, and personalized services to our members.” But that job is becoming harder, he says. “There’s a wider variety of competition in the marketplace now, from neobanks, fintechs, and big banks. Add to that a more proactive regulatory environment and the evolving threats of fraud and cybersecurity, and we’re constantly having to find the right balance between innovating our product portfolio while managing compliance and risk.”

He explains that it’s about looking at their technology stack to ensure it continues to serve members and staff.

Collections are a large part of that strategy. The value of Vantage’s loan book has increased by 23% to $812.2m from 2021-2023 and represents a significant portion of the overall business.

Recovering outstanding loans is both a commercial necessity, but also a brand play, explains Matt. “We need to engage with borrowers effectively, and in a manner that is in keeping with our community approach.”

Central to the stack

Since 2007, Vantage has entrusted this challenge to Temenos. Its Collections platform has become a critical part of the credit union’s stack. “It’s really become the one-stop repository for all our collection activity,” says Matt. “We use it to organize our standard collections work – setting our collectors’ daily work queues, giving them the information they need on each case, and for analysis. We also use it for special collections tasks like repossessions, bankruptcies, foreclosures, and deceased.”

Accelerating analysis

The reporting capability of the platform, which includes standard reports and ad-hoc analysis, has been very valuable, Matt says. “It’s super important to me. I don’t have to put in a ticket request to build a report, and then wait for it. I can just select datasets and compile reports myself. So I can produce and share insights more regularly, which means my managers are more informed too.”

This has enabled Matt to keep track of the performance of individual collectors, and the rate of collections by stage. “It means that, on any given day of the month, I can see exactly where we stand and what we need to do to achieve our targets. That translates into a lot of success by the end of the month.” This is evidenced by the data. Since using Collections, the credit union’s delinquency rate is running at below peer average.

Clear and connected

This ease of use features across the platform, explains Matt.

Adding new capabilities is equally efficient. “The platform’s APIs provide connections to lots of services. It’s just a case of letting Temenos know what we want and then activating the connector. We’ve recently done that to start a new outsource collection operation and it was so quick and easy.”

Cloud future

Vantage has run Collection on-premises, but is now looking at migrating to cloud. “We’re doing the same for some of our other core systems. Knowing that we can easily ‘lift and shift’ the platform to cloud, without any major re-architecturing or coding, is a big plus.” The move will benefit the credit union’s regulatory obligations, says Matt.

In safe hands

Matt and his team are confident in the cloud support they can expect from Temenos, because they have experienced it during upgrades. The latest of those – to version 23 – took place at the end of 2023. “The upgrade was very organized. I appreciated the project structure and the test scripts that are provided…because as we all know, we can’t think of everything all the time. It’s good to have somebody guide you that’s been through the process numerous times, and who stays with you for the duration of the upgrade.”

This support helped them approach the upgrade more effectively than ever, says Matt. “Temenos advised us to appoint a dedicated member of staff to lead on the project, test as much as possible – two to three times a week – and perform mock upgrades.”

It echoes his experience with ongoing technical support.

Matt says that they have come to view Temenos as an extension of the credit union. “Our aim is to make the lives of our members and our employees easier. And that’s what Temenos does for us.”

At a glance

• Running Temenos Financial Inclusion successfully for 23 years!
• Increased efficiency by 40%
• Reduced customer onboarding time from three days to an hour
• 61% faster to process loan applications

VisionFund International is a subsidiary of World Vision International. Established in 2003, its mission is to support children from economically disadvantaged communities by empowering families through microfinancing for entrepreneurial ventures. As well as loans, it also offers savings and insurance products. It operates 28 microfinancing institutions around the world, 576 branches (with the majority in Africa), and employs over 7,000 staff. To date, it has made over one-million loans totalling $706m, with 69% made to women.

Customer-centric innovation

Vision Fund’s mission goes hand-in-hand with an appetite for innovation. “Innovation is really about being customer-centric. We can’t deliver our goals without embracing new ideas and technologies. This is how we bring about the efficiency gains and improvements to business operations that impact the families we serve,” explains the Spokesperson.

For most of its 25 years, this technology to service the unbanked sector has come from Temenos.

Digital efficiencies

For VisionFund, that has meant expanding from its core lending business to adding deposits and insurance products. “The composable architecture of the platform makes it easy to add new capabilities and to deliver these to customers through digital channels. For example, in Uganda we rolled out a ‘Last Mile Mobile Solution’ that allows loan officers to collect data while they are in the field, enabling them to onboard new customers much faster. We’ve cut that from three days to just an hour.”

This digitization has allowed VisionFund to increase efficiency by 40%, by becoming paperless which both lowers cost and drives sustainability, a core KPI. Loan applications have also benefited, and are now completed 61% faster. Management oversight has also improved as a result. “In the past, branch managers and regional managers had no visibility on field work until they received paper reports from the loan officers. Now they can see what is happening with customer registrations and loan applications in real-time.”

Ultimately, this means happier customers, says the Spokesperson.

The platform’s breadth of capabilities and efficiencies are complemented with robust security credentials. “The security features that come with Temenos are at a high level. The database is robust, it’s so difficult to crack that system. And therefore it just gives you the comfort and confidence that you really look for when you’re thinking about your growth strategy.”

Always upgrading

Over the years, VisionFund has regularly upgraded its Temenos core. That exercise has become much faster, explains the Spokesperson. “In 2021 we upgraded the platform in Kenya. It took less than a year, whereas in the past, it could take 18 months.” Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia are next in line, with go-live due in August 2024. The platform will be configured for each market, a practice that VisionFund has employed from the start. “Customizability is a key feature of the platform for us”.

Key to this speed is the implementation partners that VisionFund has access through Temenos – SG NewTech for the Kenyan upgrade, and Straj for Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia.

The upgrades have also boosted reliability. Today, the Temenos platform is 100% reliable. “It’s available 24/7 to our customers and there are no interruptions at peak times, such as end of the day closing. That gives us confidence that we have the scale to develop and run new offers, such as ATMs.”

Holistic change

For the Spokesperson, selecting a Temenos certified partner should be a priority for any implementation project. Change management is also key. “Change is not easy, and there will always be resistance. Gain confidence at the highest level of your organization. Once you have that in place, it trickles down very easily.”

They also advise avoiding a go-live date at the end of a financial year or key reporting time. “Go live at the end of the month. So if things don’t go according to plan, you have time to remedy them before your key reporting periods. These are the little things that, through our implementations, we have learned along the way.”

The listening partner

VisionFund will be applying these lessons as it continues to upgrade the platform in other countries, as well as adding AI capabilities and Data analytics. It represents the next chapter in a partnership that goes back 23 years and a story with scalability at its heart.

This track record with Temenos points to a successful future for VisionFund, and not simply because of the technology. “Temenos is a very listening partner. They take time to understand our business, ideas and concerns, and are always available. We’ve come a long way with Temenos, and the journey continues.”

Established in 2005, Bank Albilad was the first bank in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to offer Shari’ah-compliant products. The bank provides services to retail, corporate, and SME clients with a vision to be the preferred choice for innovative Islamic banking solutions. Operating in a rapidly changing sector, Bank Albilad is embracing innovation to shape Saudi Arabia’s future banking landscape. Its strategy is built on a culture of proactively leading, collaborating, and – through its dedicated innovation center – co-creating innovative solutions tailored to meet the needs of customers and stakeholders. This commitment to driving change has propelled its success: It was one of the first banks to establish an open banking platform and has aligned itself with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to create the best future for the country’s inhabitants.

Built on success

When it opened its doors back in 2005, Bank Albilad wanted to be at the forefront of Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation.

“There was a large proportion of people in the Kingdom with unmet banking needs,” says Ahmed AlZikan, Bank Albilad’s Chief Information Officer. “They were looking for Shari’ah-compliant products but couldn’t easily access a bank branch. We wanted to foster inclusivity and create a range of products that anyone in the country could access, no matter where they were located.”

To this end, the bank began looking for software that would enable it to establish a digital business from the outset. It sought a provider that would help it get up and running as quickly as possible and allow it to take Shari’ah compliant products to market easily.

Temenos emerged as the ideal partner.

Speed matters

Within just six months of selecting Temenos, Bank Albilad’s retail business was up and running. “It was incredibly fast,” Ahmed said. “We started with an earlier iteration of Temenos core banking and have since upgraded to a new version. We also added Temenos digital banking , which we believe has given us an edge in Islamic banking.”

Bank Albilad’s corporate arm is also built on Temenos core banking. “All of the product configuration for our business banking happens within the Temenos solution,” Ahmed explains. “Even though access management is carried out in the platform itself – it is easy to establish a hierarchy of accounting authorization.”

Bank Albilad felt the benefits of leveraging Temenos core banking right away. “Everything is low-code,” Ahmed says. “IT can now build a product in three days. It takes far longer for our other teams to develop their products using Java or .NET, for example.”

The bank’s teams can then configure these products directly within the platform, accelerating product innovation. “The beauty of Temenos core banking is that our teams can configure products without actually talking to IT,” Ahmed explains.

This isn’t the only way that Temenos core banking is helping Bank Albilad to work quickly. It has also dramatically reduced close of business (COB) time.

A fast track for growth

These productivity benefits have scaled as Bank Albilad has diversified. “Temenos is helping us reduce the cost of IT and expedite our growth at the same time,” Ahmed says. “Today, all of the various subsidiaries within the bank are using Temenos. As we add more companies, we can get them onto the same system and have them up and running the next day. All it takes is a small configuration in accounting.”

These multiple companies leverage two data centers. “Because of our architecture, we have high availability,” Ahmed says. “We can switch from one data center to another in just a click, with zero issues and zero downtime.”

By operating so efficiently, Bank Albilad has grown from a three billion Saudi Arabian Riyal (SAR) business at its inception into the 17 billion SAR organization that it is today. In fact, today it is one of the top five banks in the country in terms of its product offerings across its corporate and retail businesses. Its commitment to digital is paying off, too: in 2023, it achieved a 14% year-on-year increase in mobile app users, with 71% of new retail customers joining digitally*.

A foundation for the future

Bank Albilad will continue to expand its use of Temenos solutions in the months and years to come. “We are aware that, to remain at the forefront of product innovation, we must continue to invest in our systems and processes,” Ahmed says. “That’s why we have renewed our contract with Temenos for 15 years.”

Overall, Ahmed wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Temenos to other banks like his: “In our opinion, it’s the easiest way to generate, deploy, and maintain products.”

Eurobank Group is a Greek banking group, based in Athens, Greece, with an international presence in Cyprus, Luxembourg, UK, and Bulgaria. It has 540 branches, around 10,500 employees, and total assets of $79.8bn. It is the 3rd largest bank in Greece and also in Cyprus, measured by assets, deposits, and loans. Its main strategic pillars are wealth asset management, international business banking, corporate investment banking, and bespoke banking for high-net worth individuals. These pillars vary from country to country.

Dual challenges, one solution

Chief among the bank’s challenges are regulation and digital innovation. On the former, an ever-changing, more demanding regulatory climate needs to be monitored and complied with. On the latter, the aim is to improve the customer experience by creating more self-service products and features, at a time when fintechs and neobanks are redefining customer-centric banking.

For Spyros Loizou, Group Head of International IT at Eurobank Cyprus, these are complimentary challenges. “Customers don’t just want convenience. They also need to feel that their funds, their investments, and their money, are safe and secure. So digital modernization is not just about how we create more convenient banking experiences, but also how we maintain responsible standards.”

Underpinning these dual challenges is technology, which the bank sees as both an enabler of innovation and a means to deliver its ESG commitments, explains Spyros. “Whatever we design and implement in the future has to be ESG compliant; but also, within the ESG spirit, meaning you design a process that has to be simple, and not burden the environment. That could mean going paperless with processes or minimizing the footprint of our IT operations. So we really approach ESG from a technology perspective.”

Time to change

Faced with these ambitions, Eurobank in Cyprus decided to evaluate its IT landscape. A closed architecture meant the bank relied heavily on the vendor to manage configurations and integrations, hampering innovation. This was compounded by the news that the vendor had stopped future investments in the product. “We were running legacy applications and systems that didn’t match the aspirations of the business. It wasn’t scalable, agile, flexible, or futureproof.”

That prompted the bank to search for a new core banking solution. From the outset, scale was an important selection criteria.

End-to-end advantage

Regulatory know-how was considered a key benefit of this scale. So too the breadth of the Temenos platform. “It has allowed us to continually enable new banking capabilities, without the complexities and costs from working with too many vendors.”

Eurobank Cyprus has made the most of this end-to-end platform, implementing core, digital, wealth management, Temenos Payments Hub (TPH), Financial Crime and Mitigation (FCM), trade finance, and analytics. The impact has been impressive, says Spyros. “Take TPH, for example. It has allowed us to simplify a previously complex operation of handling payments from different client types, whilst maintaining the flexibility to satisfy all the different nuances of each business line.”

Spyros also calls out the wealth management solution, from which the bank has launched a new digital offering.

This new digital wealth management service illustrates the speed with which Eurobank Cyprus can develop and launch new products. It has applied this capability across its portfolio, including investments, deposits, and lending products. “We can really go as fast as we want in a matter of days, we can launch a new product to the market, and be able to share with all our customer bases. That’s more than twice as fast as before.”

Big bang

Eurobank Cyprus has been live with the Temenos platform in its Cyprus business since April 2023; and for a “big bang implementation,” Spyros says it has been a smooth transition. “All the modules were new for all employees, but we’ve found them easy to learn and use. That empowers our people to create new products and proactively find new ways to do things more efficiently.”

The scope of the implementation – covering 85% of the bank’s IT in its Cyprus operation – felt like “waking up the next day with a brand new bank,” says Spyros. It was made more complex by starting three months prior to Covid and the workplace restrictions that ensued, which continued for 80% of the project.

Partnered by Temenos Implementation Services, the project involved not only migrating data from the old systems but also adapting the back-end procedures and operations so that they were aligned. This was a crucial aspect, recalls Spyros.

The big lesson he takes away from the implementation is the need for discipline, which points to having the right partner. “You need a lot of good governance. With a large-scale migration such as we did, it can be easy for the scope to creep even broader. It’s very important to stick to the plan, and only then allow yourself the appetite to add incrementally.”

First year returns

Just over a year after go-live, Eurobank Cyprus has already seen significant returns on its investment in Temenos. In payments it has been able to introduce STP (straight through processing), and now nine out of ten payments are fully automated, including compliance checks. Today it processes approximately 120,000 monthly payments in and out, across its product range, with the majority in their corporate, commercial, and international sectors. There has been good news too on false positives, which has come down to 6-8% as a result of the FCM module.

Spyros adds that it is also now much easier for the bank to implement new payment methods (e.g. SEPA and SWIFT) and configure these differently for its separate business lines and customer profiles, such as adjusting pricing rules and fee structures. “In combination with FCM, we can pretty much do whatever we want in order to balance operational efficiency, while ensuring compliance.”

Wealth management is another area where the bank has seen efficiencies. Prior to Temenos, every aspect – from order capture through to execution and settlement – was manual or semi-manual. STP has also been applied here, “which allows us to focus more on what really matters for the customer, such as providing good advice and investing in the manager relationship.”

Digital banking is a third area of improvement that Spyros calls out.

Eurobank Cyprus has also taken advantage of the trade finance module from Temenos. “It marries really well with our corporate business because a lot of our clients that are trading across the globe need to guarantee their shipments with letters of credit.” Again, automation has been a big benefit and applied to tasks such as calculating commissions, and managing messages across the SWIFT network. “It is another example of how we have taken fully manual processes and achieved significant efficiencies with automation.”

An ambitious future

Going forward, the bank’s priority is to grow its retail business. “With the Temenos platform, we have the capabilities we need to achieve this.” As well as scalability, composability of services, and automation, it includes availability. Since going live, the bank has seen 99.96% availability from the platform, which is even more impressive when you consider the ‘big bang’ approach it took. This robustness is complemented by a support team from Temenos that “are knowledgeable, proactive, and solve issues fast”, says Spyros.

And compliance automations make the bank better placed to manage the rollout of a new raft of upcoming international regulations and standards, such as the introduction of the Swift MX ISO format in 2025.

With the successful implementation in its Cyprus business serving as a blueprint, Eurobank Cyprus has since enabled Temenos Wealth in Greece, and is now implementing it in Luxembourg.

Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) is a conglomerate of banks servicing South-Eastern Europe, with operations in Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro. It offers universal banking services to the retail and corporate sectors, as well as running an investment banking arm. In six of its markets, NLB accounts for at least 10% of the market share, measured by balance sheet total. That figure currently stands at just over 16bn Euros, with reported profits of 514m Euros. It has 2.7 million customers, including 700,000 retail clients in Slovenia and a further 50,000 SME and large business clients. It manages 68 branches across the region.

Its objective is to be the leading bank in South-Eastern Europe by the end of 2030. To that end it is developing a digital-first operating model, supported by a scalable IT suite.

Two sides to scaling

For Franci Drnovšek, NLB’s IT Delivery Deputy General Manager, this goal consists of a dual strategy; on the one hand to innovate, while maintaining the highest security standards. “With open banking and the arrival of fintechs, customer expectations have never been higher. Today, everyone expects pre-approved investments, transactions to take seconds, and loan applications to take just minutes. So we must adapt to this new reality, by leveraging AI and cloud to innovate faster, but also be very strict about security.”

Always adapting

This journey was made easier thanks to the agility of Temenos core banking, that was first deployed in 2002 for its corporate customers. NLB keeps upgrading to the latest version.

The platform has proved to be very adaptable from the start. Recent examples of this were the incorporation of the new PDS2 regulations that came into force in 2019, and integrating N Banka (previously Sberbank), a newly acquired bank, in 2023. For the latter, go-live was executed over a weekend, following a year of planning and testing. “There was no interruption for our customers, the migration was successful and went smoothly. We were very proud of that.”

Following the success of N Banka retail customers migration to Temenos core, NLB who initially had deployed the core for its corporate clients only, will start migrating its retail customers too.

Customer-centricity in everything

Key to this is ‘Arrangement Architecture’ (AA), a powerful module within the core banking platform that allows banks to design and manage financial products in a more flexible and efficient way. “It means we can be much more customer-centric in everything from our product development to how customers engage with us.” He points to the multi-currency accounts feature and a 20% faster onboarding experience as examples of the step-change that the platform upgrade has delivered.

The bank is also seeing operational benefits.

Pushing on

The bank aims to migrate all its retail customers to the new platform version within 18 months, as well as leverage new capabilities such as Temenos Trade Finance to modernize and automate.

BIL (Banque Internationale à Luxembourg) is the oldest bank in Luxembourg, and the second largest in the country, with more than 200,000 customers. It offers retail, private, corporate and institutional banking as well as financial market services. As a sign of its importance, half of the country’s financial institutions use BIL’s infrastructure to process payments, totalling 25m per year (or a daily average of 200k). BIL also has dedicated wealth management offices in Switzerland and China. It has assets under management of EUR 43.8 billion, employs more than 2,000 people.

In 2020 it began a five-year strategic plan, with the stated aim to modernize its core banking system and simplify its operations in order to develop new and improved services for its clients.

Turning challenges into opportunities

That plan is also designed to make the bank more adaptable to changing regulations and banking standards, both at a national and international level. For the spokesperson at the bank, these dynamics are both an opportunity and a challenge. “Sometimes it consumes a lot of our investment capacity, limiting our resources to innovate for our clients. However, the requirements of the regulator and the changes to our infrastructure pushes us to improve data quality, transparency and speed of payments.”

This nuanced view can also be seen in the spokesperson at the bank’s assessment of fintechs and other market entrants, where competition is needed and opportunities can be explored to partner.

Reframing innovation

For BIL, the ultimate aim is innovation; what is the best route to developing new services and bringing them to market? Though the answer to that question changes over the years, history tells you that the bank regularly gets it right. BIL was one of the first banks in Luxembourg to propose a web-banking solution, to use AI to support credit decisions, to make strides in cross-border instant payments (in collaboration with Swift), and more recently has been at the cutting edge of developments in CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and open banking.

While this spirit of innovation remains at the heart of BIL, it is now complemented with a commitment to ESG. That has been partly driven by regulatory obligations, says the spokesperson at the bank, but also the belief that ESG principles are a route to improving every aspect of the bank. As such, ESG is seen not simply in terms of carbon footprint measures and progress in diversity, but “as a whole bank framework that informs how we are organised, how we develop products, and how we interact and help our clients.” It extends to supporting customers with their own ESG journey. “We have clients in various industries who need to go through a major transition.”

Seeking scalability

BIL recognized that its ability to innovate had become compromised by outdated technology. the spokesperson at the bank recalls: “We had a 30-plus-year-old legacy system that we’d built layer after layer, year after year. It had become like a plate of spaghetti.” Amongst the issues that created was scalability. “I’ve had to refuse some services to clients because we could not onboard the volumes they were bringing.” Increasing operational costs and a shortage of qualified managers (“Who knows about mainframe technologies anymore!”) added to the case to modernize.

The bank considered a number of approaches. Replatforming was dismissed as being unceasing, and a best-of-breed build as being too costly and complex. Instead, BIL decided to invest in a new core banking platform, and turned to Gartner’s and Forrester’s rankings to draw up its shortlist. And from there, it selected Temenos.

He also points to the technical superiority of the platform, and the relationship that had been cultivated with the Temenos team through the procurement process. “We had a great synergy with their people.”

Confidence and trust

BIL took the brave decision to go for a ‘big bang’ deployment. “On the same day we replaced our legacy technology with Temenos core, Temenos Payments Hub (TPH) and Temenos Wealth Front Office, for our retail, corporate and private business lines! You only get to do that if you are totally confident in the new technology.”

The implementation program was completed in October 2023. It involved Deloitte and LTM and included user testing, business operability and readiness tests, took around 20 months. “Temenos was also a great support throughout”, says the spokesperson at the bank, recalling how some of the software development team in India even relocated to BIL’s offices for up to six months to work on the project. “Their dedication was incredible. They were a big reason why we went live successfully.”

Breaking new ground

A spokesperson at the bank points to performance as one area where the bank has seen an immediate impact.

The bank now has the scalability to onboard high-volume clients that it had previously turned away, and to extend its payments solutions. It also has the flexibility to segment pricing for different clients. “We have been able to divide by three or four the number of pricing conditions for our clients; for wealth management we have divided by three, and for retail and corporate by five or six. The structure of the pricing system modules allows us to work in a matrix to rationalize our approach. The complexity for our finance teams to deal with this segmentation has improved.”

Scale that improvement across the 200,000 payments that the bank processes on average every day, and the efficiencies become amplified.

BIL is also excited about how the new platform can help it break new ground in the alternative investment sector. “The fund industry in Luxembourg is very developed, and our institutional clients are increasingly creative. We now have the means to support them in building more diversified portfolios.”

Everything we need

It all points to the higher potential for growth.

TPH will also be crucial to the bank developing new instant payment (sending and receiving) solutions, which regulators have set ambitious implementation timings for. “We know that TPH can do that.”

A spokesperson at the bank predicts that mutualization will become an increasing revenue stream for the bank.

It points to a long-term partnership. “It’s like a marriage”, says the spokesperson at the bank. “We’re creating a relationship for the next 20-25 years at least. And all the great moments are still ahead of us.”

We partnered successfully with LTM

One-Stop Pure-Play Global Partner for all Temenos Solutions, System Integrations and Digital Services

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We partnered successfully with Deloitte

Deloitte is an eminent leader in digital business transformation, blending global reach with strong local expertise and the Temenos Centre of Excellence in Luxembourg and Poland.

Learn more about Deloitte

Founded in 2013, Vietnam Public Commercial Joint Stock Bank (PVcomBank) is the result of a merger between Petro Vietnam Finance Joint Stock Corporation (PVFC) and Western Commercial Joint Stock Bank (WesternBank). Over the years, PVcomBank has expanded to become the fifth-largest digital bank in Vietnam. Thanks to its commitment to deliver ‘Banking for Everyone’, it now serves over three million customers across various segments in Retail, SME, commercial and corporate.

Innovation is a priority for this bank, which is why it rewards curiosity and experimentation. It is not afraid of failure – its culture can be described as “when things go wrong, lessons can be learned.”. That’s why it has established its Venture Studio, a safe space where start-ups are free to explore new concepts and take risks. In addition, the bank’s data sandbox fosters innovation by providing a secure and safe place to experiment with data and uncover new opportunities that can benefit customers and employees alike.

Prioritizing mobile

Mobile banking has long been the primary channel for PVcomBank’s retail business. However, in 2022, it realized its mobile service was falling short of customer expectations.

“Our mobile business was growing – we’d acquired a million new customers in 2022,” explains Trinh Vinh Hien, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Data Officer at PVcomBank. “Unfortunately, our customer satisfaction score for mobile banking was 60%. We knew we had to make improvements.”

PVcomBank’s customers reported slow performance and poor engagement in the mobile app. At the same time, it was taking the bank more than four weeks to add new features to a product or service. “The limitation of our traditional architecture and legacy technologies had suppressed innovation and slowed our business growth,” Trinh says.

Trinh and his team realized they needed an advanced omnichannel digital banking platform to facilitate a seamless customer experience across any channel and through every step of the customer lifecycle. So, they set about looking for a suitable solution.

Seeking a solution

“We spent around six months evaluating potential vendors,” Trinh says. “We assessed how the various solutions’ end-to-end capabilities might fit with our digital service footprint and compared the scalability, configurability, security, and overall architectures.”

The most suitable solution, however, was on PVcomBank’s doorstep. The bank had already been running on Temenos core for retail and corporate banking for 7 years and was also leveraging Temenos Trade Finance. So, when it discovered Temenos digital banking, it seemed like the perfect fit.

He points to the impact it has had on Trade Finance. “With the smart banking capabilities of Temenos digital platform, we can now digitize Temenos Trade Finance, meaning we can further increase efficiencies, reduce manual tasks and bring this service into online channels for customers.”

Trinh was particularly confident that it would receive adequate support from the software vendor. “There’s a strong Temenos footprint in Vietnam, so this, along with our previous experience working with the company, assured us that we would get all the support we required to accelerate the implementation and get up and running quickly,” he explains.

Recognizing that its existing legacy architecture would hamper a fast implementation, PVcomBank leveraged the Temenos API framework.

This approach to integration enabled PVcomBank to achieve faster time-to-value and helped it operate more efficiently, streamline processes with increased automation, and deliver a faster, frictionless customer experience.

A successful launch

PVcomBank successfully launched its new mobile banking solution in April 2024. “We have already migrated one million retail customers who now benefit from a consistent journey across any device and on any channel,” Trinh says. “We expect to extend the service to all of our three million customers by June 2025, and we also hope to onboard at least 500,000 new customers this year through a B2B2C model.”

Users of PVcomBank’s new mobile app can take advantage of fast and simple onboarding, AI-powered assistance, personalized offers based on their spending behaviors, and more. Slow performance is now a thing of the past, with response times averaging less than a second.

The benefits of Temenos are not just felt by customers. “By deploying Temenos digital banking in a cloud-agnostic architecture, our operational efficiency has increased by 40%,” Trinh says. “We’re also now able to add new features to a product or service in a matter of days. This enables us to keep up with the demands of our customers and remain competitive.”

As a result, overall customer satisfaction has improved significantly. In fact, the new Temenos-powered app has received a 4.9-star rating on the App Store and a 4.6-star rating on Google Play based on feedback from thousands of reviews.

A Temenos-powered future

Trinh is quick to confirm that PVcomBank’s decision to build its mobile app on Temenos digital was the right one.

As a result, PVcomBank is certain that it will develop its relationship with Temenos further in the months and years to come. “We have big plans ahead, and we are very confident that Temenos will support us, no matter what we decide to do,” Trinh says. “The newest version of Temenos core banking has a lot of fantastic new capabilities, and we cannot wait to upgrade so that we can further strengthen our position as a leader in Vietnam’s financial services market.”