Digital-only Banco del Sol is targeting a top-three position in the Argentine retail banking market, followed by an expansion into the SME space that comprises 99 percent of the country’s businesses. To build a compelling service proposition, the bank worked with Temenos partner GlobalLogic to implement Temenos core banking, Temenos Financial Mitigation, and Temenos Data & Analytics — gaining integrated core banking, fraud detection, and reporting capabilities. The bank can now launch new services quickly, scale its operations seamlessly, and deliver a consistently high-quality client experience. With more consumers using online services than ever due to COVID-19, this innovative digital presence will help Banco del Sol to achieve its growth objectives.

We partnered successfully with Global Logic

GlobalLogic combines design, agility and extensive experience helping clients to innovate and transform their businesses through technology, creating unique software from ideation to implementation.

At a glance

• Launched a separate digital-only arm: Saven Finance, to offer highly competitive interest rates and more savings to its members
• 5 minutes to activate new customers
• Fully automated onboarding journeys

Consumer expectations around banking services are rising, and customers are increasingly seeking out providers that can offer 24/7 access to products on the digital channel. To attract new customers and retain existing account holders, it is more important than ever for financial services organizations to offer high-quality online and mobile banking experiences.

Since it was founded in 1939, FirstOntario Credit Union has continued to enhance and extend its range of banking services to grow its client base, which today stands at 126,000 people across the province of Ontario, Canada. To inspire a new generation of customers to engage with its services, FirstOntario Credit Union set out to create its first digital-only channel.

Furthermore, the credit union also recently decided to launch a separate digital-only arm entitled Saven Finance. The new service would offer online and mobile access to unique high-interest savings accounts and guaranteed investment certificates (GIC) with exceptionally competitive rates to 13.6 million Ontarian citizens.

Turning Vision into Reality

After evaluating its back-office systems and processes, FirstOntario Credit Union realized that its core banking system would be unable to deliver the performance, scalability, and flexibility necessary to support the new digital services.

“Our goal is to shape seamless digital experiences, and without the foundation of a future-ready core banking platform, we knew that we couldn’t deliver our target customer journeys,” continues Michael Walsh. “To solve that challenge, we looked for new technology.”

Targeting a Future-Ready Banking Platform

To prepare itself for digital transformation, FirstOntario Credit Union chose Temenos core banking: a cloud-native, API-first core banking system.

Working together with a team from Temenos, FirstOntario Credit Union deployed Temenos and migrated its core banking services to the new platform.

After two years of stable operations on Temenos core banking, FirstOntario Credit Union was ready to take the next leap forward with the development of its digital channel. As well as choosing a platform to deliver online and mobile banking services, the organization wanted solutions that would automate important journeys such as account opening, enabling it to offer real-time services outside of normal business hours.

To drive its new digital experience, FirstOntario Credit Union chose Temenos digital banking. Michael Walsh comments: “Our positive experience with Temenos core banking made it an easy choice to work with Temenos again for the next phase of our transformation strategy. In addition to providing the technical capabilities we need, the partnership gives us access to Temenos MarketPlace—a curated platform that connects us with FinTech innovations from around the world.”

FirstOntario Credit Union worked closely with Temenos to develop its new digital offerings.

To support the fully digital Saven Financial brand, FirstOntario Credit Union again deployed Temenos core banking and Temenos digital banking. The combination of core banking and omnichannel delivery capabilities provided the end-to-end platform needed to launch the new brand and will enable the swift roll-out of new products and services.

Launching innovative services

FirstOntario Credit Union surged ahead with the development of its digital banking services. Powered by the Temenos platform and a range of FinTech solutions, the organization tested the first prototype of its online and mobile platforms.

With the new digital platform, FirstOntario Credit Union is expected to deliver fully automated onboarding journeys for new customers, helping it to inspire a new generation of consumers to become members.

“Ultimately, we aim to embrace a digital-first strategy and the work we’re doing with Temenos today is an important step toward that goal,” says Michael Walsh. “In the future, there will be no need for our customers to wait for one of our employees to tell them that their new account has been approved. Everything will be automated from start to finish, and within five minutes customers will be able to access their account online. Initially, we will be delivering these services on our digital-only channel, but we can already see great potential in extending the capabilities to our existing customers.”

With Saven Financial, FirstOntario Credit Union is now offering a straightforward, easy-to-use digital-only service with attractive rates and a frictionless customer experience. The launch of Saven will increase the credit union’s reach with consumers, especially among younger digital-native Ontarians looking for flexible anytime, anywhere financial services. In line with FirstOntario Credit Union’s overall strategy, much of Saven Financial’s profits will be reinvested back into local community initiatives.

Getting a progress report from the experts

The organization is now working with expert consultants from Temenos to help ensure that the new journeys meet its customers’ high expectations. The team ran an in-depth assessment of the proposed online account opening solution and provided insights into how the organization’s approach compared to others in the industry

Michael Walsh continues: “Temenos assessment placed us in the top quadrant for our space, which gave us the reassurance that our development efforts were moving in the right direction. Before we go live with the finished product, we plan to invite Temenos back to evaluate our progress.”

FirstOntario Credit Union is confident that the new services will strengthen its leading position in the province.

“The credit union system is built on cooperation, and we regularly meet with our peers to discuss challenges and find solutions,” adds Michael Walsh. “We see that Temenos shares that philosophy, and from day one, they’ve been fully engaged with our business and committed to our success. The amount of investment that Temenos puts into research and development really shines through in the quality of their offering. We have no hesitation in recommending Temenos as a partner and as a world-class banking solution.”

Formed in 2018, Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG) aims to foster financial inclusion and deliver simple, satisfying customer experiences. To realize its ambitious growth plans, the bank decided to implement Temenos core banking, migrating its previous disparate core systems onto a single instance of the cloud-native platform. With the Temenos solution in place, CBG has the capabilities it needs to create innovative new offerings for its one million customers and launch easy-to-access digital services that will boost accessibility to financial services in Ghana. The advanced core functionality will also enable the bank to streamline internal processes, reduce operating costs, and scale seamlessly to support its growth plans.

Since its foundation in 1982, Arab Tunisian Bank (ATB) has carved out a position as a top five bank in Tunisia by offering award-winning retail and corporate products. The bank has recently gone live on Temenos open platform for composable banking looking to transform its banking infrastructure to capitalize on the new digital age. ATB is a mid-sized universal bank serving retail, SME and corporate customers with a staff of 1,300 and 134 branches across the country, awarded as the “Best Commercial Bank in Tunisia” by Global Banking & Finance.

The initial phase of the transformation of its core banking systems for retail and corporate business lines with Temenos frees the bank from legacy constraints to accelerate product delivery and digital growth. The second phase of the implementation includes additional Temenos Core Banking Capabilities and pre-composed Banking Services for Digital Banking, Payments and Enterprise Risk Management. On Temenos open platform, it aims to differentiate itself in the market as a customer-centric bank through technology and innovation. Leveraging the platform’s core and digital banking capabilities to power new growth opportunities, drive efficiencies at scale, and deliver seamless customer experiences.

ATB is a mid-sized universal bank serving retail, SME and corporate customers with a staff of 1,300 and 134 branches across the country, In 2017, the bank was also awarded the “Best Commercial Bank in Tunisia” by Global Banking & Finance. With demand for online and mobile banking rising rapidly in North Africa, Temenos’ next-generation platform, built on microservices and APIs, will allow ATB to quickly and sustainably scale its business. Cloud-native and with an ecosystem built around it, the Temenos platform also enables ATB to open up to fintechs and the possibilities of new business models in the future.

We partnered successfully with ITSS:

ITSS provides high-quality services for banks with Temenos Core in parts of Africa, Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

Learn more about ITSS

Vista Bank is bringing a fresh approach to the African banking sector. To appeal to customers ranging from individual consumers to small and medium-sized businesses, Vista Bank set out to create innovative, user-friendly digital banking services. To realize this vision, the bank deployed Temenos core banking and Temenos digital banking—providing an integrated ecosystem of core banking, analytics, payments, and digital solutions. With the scalability and pre-configured local best practices of the Temenos solutions, Vista Bank has the platform it needs to achieve its strategic goal of expanding beyond its core markets in Sierra Leone, The Gambia, and Guinea to build a customer base in 15 African countries by 2025.

As its previous banking solutions reached end of life, Coast Capital seized the opportunity to refresh its core environment and introduce more business and product flexibility for its 595,000 members. The credit union—the largest in Canada by membership—deployed Temenos core banking for retail banking, gaining the ability to perform in-depth analysis of customer data that would shape its growth. Armed with deep insights into member preferences, Coast Capital is rolling out more personalized services, ensuring greater customer satisfaction today and in the future.

At Glance

• Around 4 million daily transactions attributed to its core banking solution

● 91.5% increase in members deposits

● 40,410 new members while reducing slightly the number of employees

Banco Credicoop Cooperative Limitado (BCCL) is a large cooperative bank headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The bank provides a wide range of services to small and medium enterprises, cooperatives, social enterprises, and individuals through the bank’s 276 branches and 24 service centers.

As a credit co-operative the bank is owned by its members, who hold over 2.65M accounts with the Bank. Being “member-owned” drives a focus on maximizing efficiency and cost control, which is a primary objective of the bank and a catalyst for the decision to replace its core banking system as part of a digital transformation.

Increasing Complexity and Regulation

The goal of this strategic project was to have the necessary technology to ensure the bank could function efficiently in an increasingly complex industry while meeting the constantly changing regulatory requirements. The bank needed to achieve this while maintaining and subsequently reducing costs.

After analyzing 53 different possible solutions in a formal selection process, the bank selected Temenos core banking as it met its demanding technological requirements.

Why is Technology Choice important?

The Temenos core banking system supports a number of industry-standard technologies off a single version of the underlying program code. To BCCL, this meant that they could make the decision on the application platform, the Business Process Management (BPM) tool, high availability architecture, operating system, and database largely independent of the Temenos core banking System. Enabling this choice provided BCCL with the ability to evaluate the technology infrastructure based on cost, support, reliability, etc., and did not lock the bank into this choice. This translates into lower costs and higher service levels for the technology platform that Temenos core banking runs on.

BCCL chose Red Hat, a certified partner of Temenos, to support the implementation of Temenos core banking on an Oracle 11g database. Red Hat deployed the Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) as an application server in cluster mode for the Temenos software, as well as the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite and Red Hat Cluster for high availability.

Managing the Migration Risk

The bank, right from the outset, understood the importance of the business change impact from an employee and customer perspective and wanted to ensure that the benefits of this strategic transformation project were actually achieved. It chose to take an incremental renovation phase-by-phase approach to minimize risk and deliver benefits sooner, while the whole project may take longer to deliver.

Migrating 276 branches, 24 service centers and 2.65M customer accounts is not a trivial task. Given the incremental step-by-step approach, over 130 interfaces were created to enable this progressive co-existence with the bank’s third-party and in-house applications. The bank also created a test bed of 25,000 test cases to ensure that every aspect of the new core banking system and its co-existence with the broader application landscape were tested effectively for both functionality and performance.

Embracing the Digital Revolution?

BCCL now has the core foundations and agility to take advantage of the digital revolution happening in Argentina and throughout Latin America. In 2017, the bank increased the number of members by 40,410 while keeping its number of employees slightly lower than the prior year.

In the two years since the end of 2015, the amount of deposits has increased by 91.5%.

The bank now has a strategic partner in Temenos who helps unravel the complexity while addressing the constant regulation through enhancements and new functionality made available via annual maintenance updates.

BCCL is certainly maintaining, if not reducing, costs, increasing productivity, and, most importantly, delivering a superior customer experience.

We partnered successfully with Red Hat

Providing a clear modernization path to adopting a cloud strategy for core banking, digital banking, wealth management, fund management, and payments systems.

Learn more about Red Hat