Cooperative Bank of Oromia (Coopbank) is an Ethiopian bank established by farmers 19 years ago. Their influence remains strong; more than half of the bank’s shareholders are still farmers, and it remains focused on the MSME farming and agricultural sector, which contributes more than 80% of the national economy, yet suffers from high levels of financial exclusion.

Coopbank is well on its way to fulfilling its goal to be the leading private bank in Ethiopia by 2025. It is already one of the country’s most profitable banks, with a total asset value of more than ETB 139.56 billion, operates 745 branches, employs more than 15,000 people, and has more than 13 million account holders, covering retail, corporate and institutional clients.

Nobody left behind

At the heart of this ambition is a mission to transform livelihoods and empower communities. “That is ultimately what we mean by innovation,” explains Aman Semir, the bank’s Vice President for Technologies and Digital Banking. “It’s really about solving people’s problems.” That mission goes hand-in-hand with a focus on ESG. “We’re early on in that journey, but we’re starting to see the fruits of our framework. For example, around 100 branches are now fully powered by solar and wind energy.”

Half of those branches are containers that have been modified. “We locate them in remote places where there is no electricity, and provide free Internet. For the people around there, they have become more than a bank branch. They are education and community gathering centers.”

Aman calls this the bank’s ‘phygital’ approach

You can’t be a digital bank without first educating people. So we need the physical place where this can happen.In parallel, it is building for the era of open banking. We’ve leveraging open APIs to integrate any third party to our bank.”

It is this dual track – of both readying for future opportunities while ensuring nobody gets left behind – that marks the Coopbank out.

A great fit from the start

To deliver this strategy, Coopbank turned to Temenos, deploying the core banking platform in 2016. “Everyone had become frustrated by our legacy system. Staff were having to stay in the office until midnight to record the day’s work, such as new accounts opened. You just can’t grow with that sort of inefficiency.”

The bank found its way to Temenos through a combination of Gartner ranking and reviews, RFP response, customer references and personal experiences of employees. It has not looked back. “From the start, Temenos was a really great fit. The past six to seven years have proved that our choice was the right one.”

The evidence for that is everywhere. In that time the bank has grown 19x its customer base from 700,000 to 13.2 million, and is now growing its asset value by 40% year-on-year. Loan portfolio has been growing 50% year-on-year for the past six years, and deposits have increased 39% to 42% in the same timeframe

Aman paints a before and after comparison to illustrate his point. “Before Temenos, just to come up with a simple saving product would have taken us a long time. We were forced to go to our vendors and wait for them to configure their systems. But now we can do that in just a few hours, both in-house development and third-party integrations.

Powerful partnerships

For these projects the bank accessed the Temenos certified partner network to source its implementation partners – USI for the initial implementation, Inlaks for the upgrade, and Xpert Digital to enable Temenos digital.

“It’s always been a smooth and fast process – just four months for the initial deployment, and nine months for Temenos digital.” Aman recalls that, back in 2016, the bank chose not to involve Temenos in the implementation, but instead used the model bank configuration. “The scope and flexibility of that template meant when we upgraded, there was nothing to change. It was almost too good to believe!”

Deepening the partnership

As well as upgrading the core banking platform to the latest version in 2023, Coopbank also added Temenos Trade Finance, which it uses to offer interest-free banking to Islamic customers.

The bank has also enabled Temenos digital to its suite. “It’s brought customer onboarding to the next level. We’re now able to onboard tens of thousands of customers every day, and give them a world-class experience.” It means the bank can be confident in making ambitious projections. “In the next 12 months we aim to onboard more than five million customers.” Aman explains.

On the way to the top

Aman explains that Temenos has become so important to the bank that the partnership is seen as one of the critical halves of its operation, alongside leadership. As such, it plans to double-down on its investment. “Even though we upgraded the platform just a year ago, we’re already considering adding more modules, so we will probably not wait another three to four years to do another upgrade, but get on with that very, very soon.”

Aman is confident about what that will mean for the bank’s future.

We partnered successfully with Inlaks

Learn more about Inlaks

Led by the two pioneers in the banking industry, Frank Trotter and Vincent Amato, the US challenger Bank Battle Bank, has selected Temenos SaaS to underpin the global markets technology stack. Using Temenos’ model bank methodology and the pre-composed banking services, the bank will be able to quickly roll out its world markets division, offering innovative solutions with hyper-efficient cost structures.

With Temenos core banking and payments solutions, Battle Bank will be able to offer its clients a diverse set of opportunities in F.D.I.C. insured foreign currency and market index deposits and the ability to acquire, store, and borrow against non-F.D.I.C. insured precious metals.

“Businesses on every continent rely on Atradius to support their international and domestic trading activities. Headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and operating in more than 50 countries, the company is one of the largest trade credit insurance providers in the world, offering tailored services that help small, medium, and large enterprises to protect themselves against risk from their debtors.

Atradius identified that using innovative machine learning tools to analyze credit applications would reduce the manual workload for underwriters, and accelerate assessment workflows while reducing claims.

Atradius chose to deploy the Temenos self-service Explainable AI (XAI) platform due its high accuracy as well as being the only one that generate XAI models and could explain the decisions made by AI. Implementing Temenos XAI was a smooth process, and Temenos provided excellent support throughout. The Temenos XAI models helped Atradius to refine and improve the accuracy of the predictive models. The solution has gained the confidence of Atradius underwriters (where the solution also provides information on the reasoning behind the recommendation in plain language) and now plays an integral role in their workflows.

Atradius work with Temenos has been a huge success, helping to improve the quality of Atradius client services, reduce their exposure to risk, and strengthen their market position.”

Pakistan’s Largest Bank, HBL, select the Temenos core banking platform to provide domestic and international operations with a cutting-edge banking experience. The Temenos implementation will include a full suite of client-friendly products and services that will provide end-to-end, technologically advanced solutions to both HBL’s conventional and Islamic banking clients.

HBL will onboard over 25 million of the Bank’s clients onto Temenos open platform for composable banking. Fast onboarding and quicker transaction processing will provide a more seamless client experience, enabling HBL to increase its digital footprint across Pakistan and internationally.

The new platform will accelerate the Bank’s services across all segments, markets, and channels and will also enhance adherence to local banking regulations and improve reporting standards for international markets in China, GCC, Europe, and SAARC countries.

Enda Tamweel, a leading microfinance institution in Tunisia, with 96 branches, 5 mobile branches, and over 1,800 staff has grown considerably over the last 30 years, supporting close to 900,000 customers over this timeframe. Enda has gone live with cloud-native, cloud-agnostic Temenos core banking, making Enda the ninth Temenos customer in Tunisia, demonstrating Temenos’ expertise and knowledge of the Tunisian market to fulfill its objective of contributing to the financial inclusion of millions of Tunisian entrepreneurs and offering diversified services and lines of credit.

Enda selected Temenos core banking to provide the agility to service more customers at a lower cost, and to quickly launch new products and services. Over the years, Enda’s former open-source information system has become unable to respond to the evolving needs of the institution. With Temenos’ pre-configured micro-finance capabilities, Enda is now also able to process large volumes of transactions efficiently and provide a better customer experience.

Named again among America’s Best Banks by Forbes, Commerce Bank, top 50 US Bank, has been serving customers for over 150 years. With a long-term view and a focus on the customer, Commerce operates utilizes the “super community bank” model, which requires bringing together sophisticated banking products with high-touch, high-tech delivery to create and build deep relationships.

It means that Commerce Bank attempts to combine the back end of a large regional bank offering the products and services that you would expect with the front end of a community bank or a smaller bank with deep personal relationships, excellent customer service, bankers that are empowered to solve problems.

Like every bank, Commerce Bank was facing both external and internal challenges. Externally, it’s the explosion of digital solutions, and particularly the competition from fintechs, especially in the US facing shifting customer expectations. Internally, Commerce Bank is struggling with what is usually referred to as technical debt- managing those 30-plus-year-old systems and making the system do modern things.

Commerce Bank sought the next long-term strategic partner and a platform that shares the same vision of the future and had a common culture. The bank was seeking for a modern, integrated, extensible, highly configurable platform. And finally, the Commerce bank was considering cloud options in the long term and the economics and the flexibility would really help them drive value.

Commerce chose Temenos as its strategic technology partner for its highly flexible, agile banking platform. Temenos’ modern platform increases operational efficiency and enhances Commerce’s ability to innovate and incorporate emerging technologies. The Temenos U.S. model bank approach helps Commerce to meet the unique business and regulatory needs of the market in an efficient and cost-effective way. This milestone completes its modernization project to move from its legacy systems for deposits to a modern, agile and open platform tailored for the US market.

In the quarter following the implementation, customer satisfaction and customer retention scores were either maintained or improved across all Commerce’s business segments. The great collaboration of Commerce and Temenos teams has enabled the migration of 2.5 million customers and 6.9 million accounts – spread across over 360 different product types. The bank was also able to do two releases a month and is working towards doing more. With Temenos open platform for composable banking Commerce is delighted to be able to grow and scale and shorten the time to market for new products. The super community model is a long-term strategy for Commerce coupled with big picture macro trends around digital, analytics, and automation on modern cloud architectures.

To deliver differentiated digital solutions to their customers, Commerce developed an enterprise digital strategy across their consumer wealth and commercial businesses. To connect customers to bankers Commerce launched during the pandemic, Commerce Bank Connect, based on the Temenos engage platform. It is a customized solution that allows customers to connect with a banker of their choice right from their smartphone.

Commerce helps high-net-worth individuals simplify their complex financial lives and by the end of 2022, Commerce will launch a Temenos-based private banking lending solution to keep ahead of the competition. Lastly, Commerce is modernizing its payments framework based on the Temenos payments engine, they aim to be an early adopter of the Instant Payment product introduced next year by the Federal Reserve Bank.

At a Glance

• Decrease onboarding times for financial advisors and investors to just 30 minutes

• Contributes to 100% growth in new accounts since the implementation

• Implemented the solution on the Temenos banking cloud in just 9 months

• Enables HUB24 to process growing application volumes seamlessly and more efficiently

As of September 2021, the HUB24 group has over AUD $45 billion in funds under administration on their platforms. Inevitably, rapid growth creates challenges. As well as servicing higher volumes of applications from financial advisors, HUB24 must ensure resources are available for innovation, sales activities, and ensuring compliance with the increasingly complex regulations that govern the Australian financial sector. To cover these bases and maintain momentum, HUB24 is focused on operating as efficiently as possible.

James Tesoriero, Product Development Manager – Platform and Managed Accounts at HUB24, explains: “We are growing at a fast pace and to continue our success, we aim to enhance our user experience and range of investment options while maintaining a low cost-to-income ratio.”

Planning fast, frictionless onboarding

Deploying a best-in-class solution in the cloud

Rather than re-engineering the in-house system, HUB24 looked to work with a partner with proven experience helping financial advisors to optimize onboarding. Essentially, HUB24 wanted a best-in-class solution with capabilities to build customized application journeys for different client groups. After assessing the available options, HUB24 chose Temenos Journey Manager running on the Temenos banking cloud.

Adding innovative, user-friendly features

Using Temenos Journey Manager, HUB24 added more intuitive elements to the onboarding journey for many of its investment options. For example, application forms now include fields tailored for different client groups, whether individuals, self-managed super funds, or corporate trusts, while electronic signature tools simplify the final submission steps. To pinpoint sources of friction, HUB24 harnesses the analytics capabilities of the Temenos solution to monitor how financial advisors and investors interact with the new forms.

James Tesoriero adds: “Using Temenos Journey Manager to change text fields on forms and to rearrange elements on the digital interface is very straightforward. We have built up considerable internal knowledge about the solution, and whenever we need extra assistance Temenos provides responsive support, including documentation and access to solution architects.”

Accelerating the application journey

The enhanced onboarding process enables financial advisors and investors to complete onboarding much faster than before. Industry surveys now rate HUB24 as Australia’s Best Platform[1].

James Tesoriero adds: “Streamlined onboarding helps us to become more efficient and meet the increasing demand from financial advisors and investors. With the Temenos solution, we can process rising application volumes quickly and seamlessly, while also providing advisors with an improved customer experience.”

Forging an effective partnership

In future, HUB24 plans to use Temenos Journey Manager to create frictionless onboarding journeys for new services, as James Tesoriero explains: “With the Temenos solution, we can reuse the tried-and-tested elements that we know work well to create new customer journeys, helping to accelerate the development and launch process and ensure a first-class customer experience from the start.”

[1] HUB24 secured the top ranking in the Investment Trends 2020 Competitive Platform Analysis and Benchmarking Report, which ranked 15 major investment platforms according to functionality and adviser preferences.

Demand for digital banking has surged in Malaysia since the COVID-19 pandemic, as lockdown measures have prevented citizens from accessing branch-based services. To meet the need for easy-to-use online and mobile banking, financial services group KAF planned a new suite of digital lending services. The group will harness the Temenos Banking Cloud to develop and launch new conventional and Islamic financing offerings, including seamless onboarding and origination, and fast, automated loan processing.

Using the Temenos platform, KAF will be able to innovate quickly and scale efficiently, incrementally bringing to market a full range of digital fund management, investment banking, and stockbroking services. This will help individuals and businesses to rebuild prosperity and recover from the significant economic hardship caused by the pandemic.

The road ahead for Digi Banks

Listen to the conversation with Rafiza Ghazali, Director of Digital Banking at KAF Investment Bank, and host Swapnil Deshmukh, Regional Director for Digital Banking at Temenos talking about the changing bank landscape, customer expectations from digibanks, digibank success, and the partnerships between digibanks and other fintechs.

Listen to the Podcast (opens in a new tab)

Lithuanian fintech company FINCI was founded in 2019 with the mission of offering better payment solutions to SMEs, commercial organizations, and large corporates that have long been underserved by traditional banks. The company prides itself on its ability to deliver high levels of personalized service that goes beyond chatbots and automated help centers – for example, every client gets a dedicated account manager and ongoing support.

Today, FINCI serves customers in over 30 countries with a range of products, including business accounts that allow its clients to transact in multiple currencies from a single dashboard to avoid conversion fees, improve cash flow, and make global trade more efficient. It also offers a suite of fast and flexible payment services that are perfectly suited to complex and unconventional businesses. Innovation is a priority for the company: it was awarded the Fintech Innovator of the Year at the 2023 Lithuanian Fintech Awards for accelerating the use of blockchain technology to make cross-border payments faster. It has also developed an open API ecosystem where it joins with fintechs to develop exciting new products. Sustainability is also important to FINCI, which is why it has moved away from plastic cards and has joined Mastercard’s Priceless Planet Coalition.

Better by design

According to FINCI’s CEO Mihails Kuznecovs, traditional banks are failing tens of thousands of businesses. That’s because complex international organizations such as construction companies, flight operators, logistics firms, and software houses need more support than banks are prepared to give.

“Traditional banking relationships are mostly transactional – banks prioritize interest rates and revenue,” Mihails says. “Fintechs tend to be more focused on building products from the ground up to meet exact customer needs. However, many of today’s fintechs rely on technology alone. This also fails complex businesses. That’s why our approach is different. We want to deliver exceptional experiences for our clients, and that requires a human touch.”

This doesn’t mean FINCI shies away from technology. In fact, the opposite is true. Since day one, the company has leveraged best-of-breed solutions from Temenos that have enabled it to realize new efficiencies, lower its operating costs and thereby focus its efforts on delivering a high level of service to its clients.

Big picture thinking

Despite being a startup, FINCI was keen to build its business on a solution that could scale as it grew and support it in the long term. “You have to think big right from the start, otherwise you end up facing problems later on,” Mihails says. “For us, this meant choosing an industry-leading platform.”

Temenos was the obvious choice.“Several of us already had experience with Temenos solutions,” Mihails explains. “I started my career in banking 25 years ago with the DOS version of Temenos. I’ve seen its reputation grow as a reliable, sustainable, and scalable solution. So, the choice was inevitable; we couldn’t have chosen anything else to build our business on.”

Fast time to value

FINCI chose to adopt three key Temenos solutions: core, Temenos Payments Hub (TPH), and Financial Crime Mitigation (FCM). It worked with several implementation partners to ensure it could go to market quickly.

“Temenos has many partners situated across the world – and that’s a huge benefit,” Mihails says. “It means that there’s support capacity wherever and whenever we need it.” This approach has paid off.

Today, the cloud-based Temenos core `allows FINCI to easily integrate with new payment networks such as Ripple Payments. In fact, the company can onboard new payment providers in a matter of weeks, without a huge investment in internal IT staff.

“We can take new products and services to market faster,” Mihails says. “This gives us an edge over the competition.”

Security made simple

At the same time, the advanced security protocols delivered by Temenos FCM have enabled FINCI to identify potential sanctions and anti-money laundering breaches before a payment completes.

With payments screening completed in just seconds, FINCI can offer the instant payment processing its clients are looking for. “We can process thousands of requests per second without any lag,” Mihails explains. “It’s completely reliable – I don’t recall a time when the system has been down.”

All this can be done while staying compliant. “Temenos Payments Hub supports new global and regional payment rails, including SEPA, SWIFT, and the TARGET2 ISO20022 standard, right out of the box,” Mihails explains.

A foundation for growth

FINCI’s rapid growth speaks for itself. The company started with zero customers in 2020 and now has thousands – many of which are large enterprises. “We’ve gone from processing hundreds of payments every day to hundreds of thousands,” Mihails says. “Today, we are processing over €1.2 billion annually. We have realized a 50% growth in card transactions every year and 100% growth in the volume of payments we are processing.”

Mihails says he owes this success to Temenos.

Reflecting on its success to date, Mihails offers advice to other fintechs looking to hit the ground running in such a competitive industry: “Our success is a result of having a scalable solution that removes a lot of headaches for us,” he says. “With that in mind, I’d encourage any like-minded startup to think big instead of thinking local like so many do. As a first step, engage with the Temenos team. Once you start having the discussion, you’ll see the solution come to life and realize just how easily your problems can be solved.”

Embracing the future

This is just the start of FINCI’s journey with Temenos. Having recently extended its contract from three years to eight, the company is keen to embrace new functionalities and services.

“We’re excited to see what we can achieve with Temenos’ new AI capabilities,” Mihails says. “We’re also looking at integrating with crypto, blockchain, and investment product providers as we look to expand into new markets.”

Innovation and solid, dependable service have earned Banco Bolivariano a position as a top-five bank in Ecuador, with 821,000 customers and USD 4 billion in assets under management. Founded in 1980, the bank initially focused on the corporate and SME sectors, but also now targets the high-net-worth market with retail banking products, including current and savings accounts, credit cards, and money transfers.

Placing digital transformation at the center of its growth strategy, Banco Bolivariano has developed many ingenious offerings. For example, the bank is the only one in Ecuador to offer customers the option to check their online account in seconds using a ‘quick view’ feature. Banco Bolivariano also builds partnerships with leading cloud providers to explore the use of API gateways for potential future Open Banking initiatives.

Ronald Romero Morán, Head of Digital Channels at Banco Bolivariano, explains: “As most Ecuadorian retail banks offer digital services, we use innovation to stand apart with a unique user experience. From using chatbots to adding fresh features to our online banking platform, we aim to make every digital interaction as quick, simple, and frictionless as possible, leaving our customers more time to focus on the things that matter most to them.”

Planning a more intuitive mobile banking experience

Within its digital channels, Banco Bolivariano identified room for improvement in its mobile banking app, known as 24móvil. Previously, the bank used an application from a local external vendor to run, but they needed a provider with a roadmap of innovative and world-class banking solutions. As a result, the app was falling behind the mobile services offered by competitors, and Banco Bolivariano goal is to become the best digital bank in Ecuador.

Gustavo Molina Flores, Chief of IT at Banco Bolivariano, comments: “We were using legacy solutions that needed almost constant updates and large amounts of time-consuming patching. Maintaining compatibility with new releases of mobile operating systems was also very difficult, and we did not have the tools to build and roll out new features quickly to meet evolving customer preferences.”

Setting its sights on delivering the best mobile banking app in Ecuador, Banco Bolivariano planned a new approach. The bank looked for a best-of-breed platform that would deliver leading-edge innovation capabilities, and enable its developers to enhance the user experience, adding features such as seamless onboarding, greater security, and more flexible payments services.

Deploying best-of-breed development tools in the cloud

To optimize its 24móvil app, Banco Bolivariano sought a partner with a proven track record helping major financial institutions to build first-class mobile banking services. A clear solution roadmap was essential, along with sophisticated development tools to improve time-to-market for new features. After assessing available options, Banco Bolivariano chose to deploy Temenos digital banking solution running on the Temenos banking cloud.

Working with Temenos, Banco Bolivariano implemented the solution and recently completed an upgrade to the latest version, as Gustavo Molina Flores explains: “Although a complex process, integrating Temenos digital banking with our back-office and core banking environment was much easier than expected. Since then, the Temenos banking cloud has facilitated upgrades, keeping us up-to-date with new capabilities.”

Building a culture of innovation across the bank

Using Temenos digital banking, Banco Bolivariano developed and launched a range of more customer-centric mobile services. For example, the bank introduced faster and more user-friendly onboarding processes, cutting-edge biometric authentication options, and peer-to-peer payments. Where the bank’s previous mobile solutions stifled innovation, Temenos digital banking enables its developers to reduce time-to-market for new features.

The deployment of Temenos digital banking forms part of a much wider emphasis on innovation throughout Banco Bolivariano. Recently, the bank adopted agile project management practices to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and strengthen commercial performance. Banco Bolivariano feels confident that implementing the Temenos solution is supporting the progress of this wide-ranging cultural transformation.

Kyra Arcia Marcano adds: “Across the bank, we are taking steps to move faster and improve our service delivery. We have built a technology ecosystem that helps our development teams to design, test, and launch new products. With its extensive ready-made capabilities, Temenos plays a crucial role in enabling us to turn innovative plans into reality.”

Getting ahead of the competition

With the enhanced 24móvil app, Banco Bolivariano is differentiating itself from market rivals and winning more customers. Their last NPS score was 57 compared to an average of 49 from competitors. User feedback for the app has been highly positive, with an app rating of 4 out of 5 stars on Android and 3 out of 5 on iOS.

In the two years since the project launch, Banco Bolivariano has seen the average number of monthly users of the app rise by 127 percent, total user interactions with the app increase by 185 percent, and financial transactions completed through the app grow by 312 percent.

Continuing a prize-winning partnership

The project with Temenos has earned Banco Bolivariano widespread praise from across the American financial services sector. Most notably, the bank recently won silver at the ‘Financial Innovators of the Americas Awards 2021’ run by Fintech Americas in the ‘Customer Experience (CX) & Engagement Innovation’ category. Building on this success, the bank is continuing to explore other use cases for Temenos digital banking.