Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

At a Glance

• Sets new standards for innovation as one of the first digital-only banks in Ecuador

• Plans to bring new banking services to one million existing cardholders and business clients

• Running on the Amazon Web Services public cloud provides exceptional levels of availability

• Data analytics supports development of differentiated, hyper-personalized services

Since 1968, Diners Club Ecuador has been among the premier financial service providers in South America. Part of Grupo Pichincha—one of the largest finance groups in the region—Diners Club Ecuador was the first issuer of credit cards in the country, and has since extended its services to include payments, insurance, investments and much more. The organization now serves around one million cardholders and merchants.

Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center Club Ecuador, explains: “We lead the Ecuadorian credit card market through continuous innovation and improvement. We are always focused on building lasting relationships with our clients and merchant clients, helping them at every stage of their lives.”

Tackling a fresh challenge

In recent years, a regulatory change has created a valuable opportunity for Diners Club Ecuador. The new rules allow the organization to operate as a full-service bank, rather than solely as a credit card issuer and merchant acquirer. To take advantage of the new financial landscape, Diners Club Ecuador planned to launch user-friendly banking products, including deposits, loans, and mortgages.

We wanted to embrace a digital-first model, giving clients the flexibility to access our services online at the click of a button on a 24/7 basis. This would also make us one of the first digital-only banks in Ecuador. To broaden our appeal to new clients, we aimed to tailor our banking services to address the needs of different market segments.”

Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center at Diners Club Ecuador

Making the transition into banking would require a new technology strategy. The key requirement was a powerful, scalable core banking platform to manage transactions, ensure compliance, and support always-on digital services. Alongside this, Diners Club Ecuador looked to enhance its data analytics capabilities to enable the development of smarter, more targeted products and services.

“Exceptional performance and availability were absolute musts for our new core solution, as just one second of downtime could have huge costs and significantly damage the client experience,” adds Mónica Carrión. “We wanted to extend our use of predictive models and AI beyond credit scoring and risk management to understand client behaviors in more depth.”

Harnessing proven solutions from the market leader

After compiling a shortlist of providers that could deliver core banking and sophisticated analytics solutions in South America, Diners Club Ecuador decided to deploy Temenos core banking and Temenos Analytics running on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud.

We noted that third parties including Gartner and Forrester ranked Temenos as the world-leader for core banking platforms. Plus, we received excellent references from other banks using Temenos solutions, which gave us confidence. Temenos could offer real thought leadership in the banking sector, too, which would be helpful as we had previously concentrated solely on the credit card market.”

Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center at Diners Club Ecuador

She continues: “Another point in favor of Temenos was their investment in research and development; we knew we were getting the best and latest banking functionality. The cloud model is part of our long-term innovation strategy, allowing us to optimize cost efficiency and outsource infrastructure management.”

Implementing high-performance cloud-native tools

Diners Club Ecuador worked with Temenos to implement and configure the core banking and analytics solutions running on the AWS cloud. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizations employed a remote working model to maintain momentum on the project.

Mónica Carrión adds: “The deployment was a steep learning curve, but Temenos offered support at every stage.”

The Users across the IT, product design, innovation, and marketing departments at Diners Club Ecuador now harness the Temenos solutions to develop digital banking services, monitor and analyze online client interactions, and process transactions. Easy to scale, the cloud-native Temenos on AWS solutions have been purpose-built to provide high levels of performance, resilience, and security.

Our teams were very quick to get to grips with the capabilities within the Temenos solutions. We find the robustness and availability of the platform and the flexibility of the development tools very useful, which allows us to set parameters for new products and services”

Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center at Diners Club Ecuador

Bringing digital banking to Ecuador

Working with Temenos, Diners Club Ecuador is adding banking products to its existing credit card portfolio. Already, existing clients are opening bank accounts, with more services planned for the coming months. The simple, secure 100% digital banking offerings will enable users to access accounts, and check and manage transactions while on the move, 24/7.

Among the services currently under development are interest-bearing deposits accounts, advance billing services for businesses, and mortgage loans. The organization has also created bespoke lending products for merchants that enable users to sign up online with just a few clicks; within a few months, Diners Club Ecuador has already granted loans worth tens of millions of US dollars.

Mónica Carrión explains: “With Temenos, we have enhanced our value proposition, bringing user-friendly digital banking to the market. In the coming months, we aim to cross-sell banking services to one million existing clients, as well as winning new business”.

Using Temenos Analytics, Diners Club Ecuador is uncovering insights into client preferences, as Mónica Carrión confirms: “With Temenos Analytics, we can analyze clients’ purchasing habits and create more compelling and hyper-personalized banking services. This will help to inspire long-term loyalty.”

Building a more successful future

Diners Club Ecuador is also keeping a close eye on Open Banking regulations in Europe, with the possibility that the rules could soon be extended to Ecuador. If this happens, the API capabilities of the Temenos platform will place Diners Club Ecuador in an excellent position, enabling seamless third-party integrations.

Temenos are a world-class partner. Building on our long and successful history, we see an even brighter future, with Temenos playing a key role in our evolution. We are setting the standard for finance innovation in Ecuador and within the Diners Club International franchise network globally.”

Mónica Carrión, Vice President of Services Center at Diners Club Ecuador

We partnered successfully with

*Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a secure cloud services platform, offering compute power, database storage, content delivery and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow.*

Region

Latin America

Solutions

Cloud & SaaS
Core Banking
Payments

Sector

Business Banking
Challenger Banks
Corporate & Commercial Banking
Retail Banking

Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

At a Glance

• Facilitates the creation and launch of the first fully digital bank in Trinidad & Tobago

• Enables the management of three separate banking entities on a single instance of Temenos Core Banking

• Simplifies the development of new services for different markets with a flexible, modular architecture

• Elastic scalability and exceptional cloud performance will help to support rapid customer growth

For more than 40 years, ANSA Merchant Bank has played an important role in the economic development of the Caribbean. Headquartered in Trinidad and Tobago, the bank provides financing, investment, and wealth management solutions to individuals, businesses and government bodies, locally and regionally.

Since its establishment, ANSA Merchant Bank has focused almost exclusively on commercial loans and project finance. But now, it’s making moves into retail banking, with the acquisition of Bank of Baroda, rebranded as ANSA Bank in early 2021. ANSA Bank will be a new type of bank in Trinidad and Tobago, focused on offering customer-centric digital services rather than serving clients via traditional bricks-and-mortar branches.

A spokesperson at the bank explains: “We set a high bar for ourselves with ANSA Bank, as we are looking to create the very first fully integrated digital bank in Trinidad and Tobago. Our vision is to widen the services available to individuals and businesses in the local market. We want to offer something that will improve the lifestyles of our customers and help them reach their financial dreams.”

Modernizing the core environment

To achieve its growth plans in the retail and business banking spaces, ANSA Merchant Bank needs a technology foundation that is agile, flexible, and scalable. Traditionally, the bank relied on a homegrown core system to support its client services, but this was increasingly difficult and costly to operate. Managing the system, for example, soaked up many hours and relied on the availability of experienced in-house teams.

To reduce risk and complexity, ANSA Merchant Bank planned to modernize the core environment, moving away from the homegrown system and onto a proven, best-of-breed platform with full vendor support. By adopting a more modern, streamlined core solution, the bank aimed to improve internal efficiency and support the delivery of more differentiated services across all entities and business lines.

We realized that moving to a cloud-based core banking solution would offer multiple advantages. First, it would mean a lower cost of ownership. More than this, a cloud platform would mean that we relied less on internal resources to manage and maintain infrastructure and applications. In addition, we felt the scalability of cloud would facilitate expansion into new markets and faster launch of new products.”

Spokesperson at the bank

Finding the right solution

After assessing potential vendors, ANSA Merchant Bank selected Temenos as its new core banking platform. The Temenos solution would allow the bank to access a rich ecosystem of functionality to support the development and delivery of retail and business banking, and wealth management services. ANSA Merchant Bank decided to run Temenos core banking on the Temenos banking cloud.

a spokesperson at the bank explains: “We knew that Temenos was a market leader for core banking solutions, with real expertise. When we engaged Temenos, we were immediately impressed with their communications and commitment to our success. And their robust, scalable solution was also just what we needed. The focus Temenos has on building new capabilities for its clients was another major plus-point.”

Setting up fast in the cloud

Working closely with expert service delivery teams from Temenos, ANSA Merchant Bank successfully implemented Temenos core banking running on the Temenos banking cloud on Microsoft Azure. By opting to deploy the core banking platform using the software-as-as-service (SaaS) model, the bank was able to speed the implementation process and enable fast access to key banking services for its users.

Temenos ensured that we achieved a smooth transition to the cloud. We knew that setting up some of our workloads, such as close of business processes, would be tricky to configure. Temenos provided the expert resources to tackle the challenges and ensure that we were operational very quickly.”

Spokesperson at the bank

ANSA Merchant Bank enjoys a very successful working relationship with Temenos, as spokesperson at the bank confirms: “We are building a really strong partnership with Temenos. We enjoy great communications, especially with their cloud team, who we speak with three times every week. Whenever we have questions about functionality or need support, Temenos are always quick to respond with a resolution.”

Bringing a new digital model to market

Today, ANSA Merchant Bank uses Temenos core banking running on the Temenos banking cloud as the agile, modern core platform behind its retail banking, investment and wealth management services. Thanks to the multi-company architecture of Temenos, the bank can run all of its entities on a single instance of the core platform—helping to minimize costs and complexity, and improving operational efficiency.

A spokesperson at the bank continues: “We have well-established merchant banking operations in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, as well as our new retail banking arm. Within Temenos core banking, we have set up a separate, tailored environment dedicated to each of our operations, with all the tools we need for supporting clients and product development. With Temenos, it is easy for us to roll out services tailored to our target markets.”

The flexibility of Temenos core banking proved a crucial component in the successful acquisition and development of digital-first ANSA Bank, as spokesperson at the bank adds: “Following the acquisition of Baroda Bank, we migrated their core environment onto Temenos, avoiding the cost and hassle of purchasing a new system. Once this process was complete, we could start to build innovative digital banking services.”

Supporting long-term growth

With Temenos core banking running on the Temenos banking cloud, ANSA Merchant Bank has a powerful combination of elastic scalability, agility, and leading-edge product development functionality. The Temenos solutions provide a strong foundation for the bank to drive innovation in its range of products and services, and to achieve long-term growth in its customer base in Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and beyond.

We’ve been so impressed with the scalability and flexibility of Temenos core banking and the Temenos banking cloud. We can quickly and easily add new modules and leverage different services to ensure we deliver value to our customers and continue to improve our satisfaction scores.”

Spokesperson at the bank

Reaping the benefits of the cloud

In addition, adopting the Temenos banking cloud has enabled ANSA Merchant Bank to reduce costs and operational risk. The bank no longer has to maintain physical infrastructure, or worry about running critical management processes such as backups and upgrades. Furthermore, the enhanced security of the Temenos SaaS model keeps the bank well-protected against the threat of cyberattacks.

A spokesperson at the bank continues: “The Temenos banking cloud has been very stable, and the performance has been phenomenal—even as our database has grown at a rapid rate. We have enjoyed exceptional uptime rates, and have the option to add extra processor capacity whenever required. Throughout ANSA Merchant Bank, there is real confidence in the robustness of Temenos core banking and the Temenos banking cloud.”

Working with Temenos puts us in a great position to take advantage of new opportunities, whether it’s in digital banking, wealth management, or project finance for local businesses. We believe that our partnership with Temenos will be a key enabler of our future expansion, bringing innovative financial services to the people of the Caribbean. With Temenos, we can turn our ambitions into reality.”

Spokesperson at the bank

We partnered successfully with

Microsoft’s Financial Services group helps financial firms leverage technology to amplify the impact their people can deliver to drive business success.

Region

Latin America

Solutions

Cloud & SaaS
Core Banking

Sector

Business Banking
Challenger Banks
Corporate & Commercial Banking
Retail Banking
Wealth Management

Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

At a Glance

• First Schedule I bank in Canada to measure and disclose entire Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions

• Enables 93.53 to 97.05% reduction in emissions by using Temenos banking cloud rather than on-premise infrastructure

• Achieved carbon neutral status for Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions

EQ Bank stands apart among Canadian banks by offering a simple, customer-centric approach to banking that enriches people’s lives. Founded in 2016, the digital-only bank serves more than 360,000 customers, and was named “Canada’s Best Bank” in 2021 and 2022 by Forbes Magazine. EQ Bank takes its responsibilities to customers and the wider community seriously, including in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters.

The spokesperson at the bank explains: “We are increasingly focusing on building a robust ESG strategy, simply because it’s the right thing to do for the good of the environment and society at large. We are committed to doing as much as we can, as fast as we can, from creating an inclusive culture within the bank to planning and implementing effective procedures that improve our sustainability.”

Targeting carbon neutral status

During a review of existing ESG practices, EQ Bank found that its social and governance frameworks were aligned with industry best practices and federal regulations. However, the Bank identified an opportunity for improvement in its environmental strategy, and decided to focus more energy and resources on developing a more proactive approach to measuring its greenhouse gas emissions and tackling climate change.

The spokesperson at the bank continues: “We were already fully paperless in our back office, and the only Schedule I bank in Canada to operate using a branchless business model, cutting our energy requirements. But we wanted to do more to reduce our emissions and find ways to achieve carbon neutral status. In the long term, we are aiming to move towards net zero, in line with the Canadian government’s commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.”

Accessing trusted, reliable emissions data

One step in EQ Bank’s new environmental policy was making ESG a board-level priority, with the Governance and Nominating Committee now responsible for overseeing initiatives. Employees, too, are fully engaged in the program, with the Green Team, an Employee Resource Group, providing education on environmental sustainability to colleagues and offering feedback and suggestions to the Bank’s leadership.

To support the journey towards target setting, EQ Bank aimed to establish an accurate measure of its Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions: direct emissions from its own operations, and indirect emissions generated by its partners, suppliers, and customers. This approach would ensure accountability and full disclosure of the Bank’s entire carbon footprint and provide a baseline for targeted reductions—but implementing it posed challenges.

“To create accurate calculations of our carbon footprint, we need access to high quality, comprehensive emissions data across our value chain.” adds the spokesperson at the bank. “This becomes especially difficult for Scope 3 emissions, which cover emissions generated by activities that we finance, and goods and services we purchase. Engaging with our suppliers is therefore essential to ensure we work with trusted, reliable, and detailed data.”

In the effort to reduce emissions, EQ Bank also recognized that working with partners who place a similar emphasis on ESG issues would form an important part of its long-term success. For example, the Bank looks to embrace green technologies that help to optimize operating efficiency and minimize its infrastructure footprint.

Another ESG consideration is that customers and investors often now want to make an ethical decision when choosing their financial provider. By providing transparency on our emissions, we can satisfy their concerns and establish ourselves as a sustainability leader in the Canadian market.”

Spokesperson at the Bank

Partnering with climate-conscious technology providers

An important component in the progress of EQ Bank’s ESG program has been its collaboration with Temenos, and its use of the Temenos banking cloud running on Microsoft Azure. In part, this reflects the willingness of Temenos and Microsoft to share data on their own emissions in the form of information dashboards, which have helped EQ Bank to calculate their Scope 3 emissions with accuracy.

“Temenos and Microsoft have been model partners to EQ Bank,” comments the spokesperson at the bank. “They share our focus on ESG issues and readily provide a detailed breakdown of their carbon footprint whenever we request it. This ensures we can build a reliable picture of our Scope 3 emissions, without needing to rely on estimates.”

Crucially, using the Temenos banking cloud enables EQ Bank to increase its energy efficiency and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. By migrating its on-premise version of Temenos core banking onto the Temenos banking cloud, EQ Bank became the first bank in Canada to host its core banking system in the cloud.

Microsoft research suggests that this cloud model is up to 93 percent more energy efficient, with 98 percent lower carbon emissions compared to traditional on-premise server deployments. And by harnessing the Temenos banking cloud, EQ Bank has achieved savings in 2021 of between 93.53 and 97.05 percent in metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions compared to running an on-premise alternative.

Leading the way among Canadian banks

Working with Temenos has also enabled EQ Bank to improve its ESG reporting and accountability. Accurate data on its infrastructure usage helps the Bank to build a complete picture of its environmental impact, which is now disclosed through a comprehensive Environmental, Social and Governance Performance report.

With the help of Temenos and Microsoft, we have calculated our full greenhouse gas emissions and increased our disclosure to the market. In 2021, we became the first Canadian Schedule I bank to measure and disclose our entire Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. We also achieved carbon neutrality for our Scope 1 and 2 emissions—proving that we are setting the agenda for sustainable banking disclosure in the sector.”

Spokesperson at the Bank

Looking ahead to net zero

EQ Bank has also noticed that its focus on environmental sustainability has made a positive impression with customers, as the spokesperson at the bank explains: “We saw a year-on-year increase of our customer base by 32 percent in March 2022. While this is not entirely due to our sustainability plan, we strongly believe that our focus on ESG strengthens our appeal. Customers know they are depositing their money with a bank that does the right thing.”

Moving forward, and as the quality of emissions data improves, EQ Bank intends to formulate specific, attainable reduction targets, with 2023 as the expected base year for its commitments. In time, the Bank also hopes to reach a position where it can set a realistic timeframe for achieving net zero status.

We are very proud of how far we have come in our sustainability journey in the past few years, and our work with Temenos and Microsoft has been a key part of our success. Using the Temenos banking cloud has been hugely helpful for understanding and reducing our carbon footprint, helping us to set the standard for responsible, low-carbon banking in Canada that others will hopefully follow.”

Spokesperson at the Bank

We partnered successfully with

Microsoft’s Financial Services group helps financial firms leverage technology to amplify the impact their people can deliver to drive business success.

Region

North America

Solutions

Cloud & SaaS

Sector

Challenger Banks
Retail Banking

Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

Hong Kong’s first homegrown virtual bank, WeLab Bank, has publicly launched using cloud-native Temenos core banking platform to provide a range of next-generation digital services for customers to enjoy 24/7 from their mobile phones. WeLab Bank was designed, built, and launched using cloud-native Temenos core banking platform in less than 10 months. The fully digital bank has seen rapid take up with a reported 10,000 account openings within the first 10 days of launch. With the preconfigured system of Temenos core banking platform, WeLab Bank was able to bring its service to market faster and extend its innovation with more than 400 out-of-the-box APIs.

Implemented on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, WeLab Bank is the first multi-cloud digital bank in Hong Kong. Operating on multiple clouds at the same time provides increased operational resilience and disaster recovery capability, which helped WeLab to meet reliance and resolution planning requirements of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority for all banks.

WeLab Bank was born from an initiative to reimagine the banking experience for the 7.5 million people of Hong Kong. From the start, we knew this vision needed the most advanced cloud native technology and a partner that shared our vision for digital transformation. With Temenos we have efficiently built WeLab Bank from scratch, free from any legacies, with innovative features that proactively help customers to take control of their money and their financial journey.”

Adrian Tse, Chief Executive Officer at WeLab Bank

Developing a cost-effective and scalable core banking solution was paramount for WeLab Bank. With Temenos, WeLab bank is set to transform banking in Hong Kong. In as fast as 5 minutes, customers can remotely open a WeLab Bank account with $0 monthly fees and start enjoying differentiated services such as time deposits with competitive rates, an interest-bearing deposit account with an instant virtual Debit Card, and real-time payments powered by Faster Payment System (FPS). This makes it easy for WeLab Bank to scale for future business growth efficiently and eliminates the need to provision for peak processing volumes so that the bank only pays for its actual usage, yielding significant cost savings.

Region

Asia Pacific

Solutions

Cloud & SaaS
Core Banking

Sector

Challenger Banks
Retail Banking

Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

The white label card and banking-as-a-service provider, Optimus Cards, chose Temenos open platform for composable banking to support the expansion of its cards-as-a-service business. Temenos will help the UK Electronic-Money Institution launch new products faster and scale efficiently as it expands into new markets. As part of Uphold, the global multi-asset digital trading platform with over 10 million users, Optimus has expansive growth plans. It is launching new white-label credit card and multi-asset crypto-enabled debit card services and partnering with local regulated issuers in Europe and the U.S. to expand its footprint and tap new growth opportunities.

Our strategy is based on innovation, speed and flexibility, providing solutions to mutual institutions like credit unions and building societies, and to innovative fintechs bringing Web 3 services to the market. The economics of our offering enables customers of all sizes to offer card services profitably, and that requires a high-performance technology stack. Optimus chose Temenos for the platform’s proven reliability and resilience, and the flexibility to compose solutions for a broader range of Banking-as-a-Service offerings in the future. With a client base that includes over 950 core banking clients and more than 600 digital clients, along with 500 credit unions in the U.S., Temenos has a significant customer ecosystem and experience that will be invaluable as we push into new markets.”

Lindsay Robertson, CEO at Optimus Cards

Region

Europe

Solutions

Core Banking
Digital Front Office
Financial Crime Mitigation

Sector

Challenger Banks
Retail Banking

Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

BforBank, the fully digital bank of the Crédit Agricole Group, launched in 2009, offering a new approach to savings, life insurance, mutual funds, and e-brokerage to the French mass affluent market. The online bank has since expanded to provide a full suite of retail banking services, with accounts, payments, and lending products, including mortgages. The bank is moving from an on-premise implementation to using Temenos core banking solutions on Google Cloud to tap new growth opportunities and drive efficiencies at scale. As banking becomes more collaborative, moving to a fully cloud-native, API-first stack on Google Cloud will give the bank hyperscale agility, flexibility, and scalability to launch new services faster at a lower cost.

The banking world is changing fast. After 12 years of successful operations and ahead of new strategic initiatives, we wanted to challenge our initial choices. We initiated a complex process and tested several software vendors with proof of concept on Google Cloud. Temenos was just the obvious choice, having invested relentlessly during the past years to deliver the most open and secure cloud banking platform for composing and deploying banking services at scale.”

Pascal Luigi, Deputy CEO at BforBank

Region

Europe

Solutions

Cloud & SaaS
Core Banking

Sector

Challenger Banks
Retail Banking

Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

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.

We’ve created Battle Bank to fill a widening gap in the traditional banking landscape — to offer high-yield interest accounts coupled with access to the world markets. To make that vision a reality, we need technology that is fast, open, and scalable as we continue to grow our offerings. This partnership with Temenos will provide exactly that, making our clients’ experience as seamless and efficient as possible.”

Frank Trotter, President and Board Member at Battle Financial, Inc.

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.

We are building Battle Bank to offer exceptional banking values and unique investing offerings, With Temenos, we know that it’s possible to launch fast and scale quickly. The unprecedented breadth, depth and scale of the platform’s modular banking capabilities creates opportunities for our customers to prosper through a diversification of financial holdings with us.”

Vincent Amato, Chief Operations Officer at Battle Financial, Inc.

Region

North America

Solutions

Cloud & SaaS
Core Banking
Digital Front Office
Payments

Sector

Business Banking
Challenger Banks
Wealth Management

Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

Telenor Microfinance Bank, the Operator of Pakistan’s leading digital payments platform Easypaisa, required scalability, automation, agility, and a proven technology platform to offer personalized, customer-centric products while allowing for lower operational costs and increased return on equity. Temenos’s best-in-class solutions and System’s implementation expertise enable Telenor Microfinance Bank to innovate faster and provide customers with much-needed access to digital savings accounts and micro-loans.

We have always remained true to our mission of transforming Pakistan into a cashless society through collaboration and technology. Our partnership with NdcTech to implement Temenos solutions has added a vital component to our services infrastructure, which will catapult our move towards digitization. By going live on the platform, we can now fast-track our digital transformation journey and come up with more innovative digital financial solutions for our customers in a more efficient manner.”

M. Mudassar Aqil, CEO at Telenor Microfinance Bank/Easypaisa

Telenor Microfinance Bank went live on Temenos, the next generation in core banking, Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation (FCM), Temenos Advanced Collection (TAC), and Temenos Analytics and Reporting, to deliver a seamless, simple, and secure digital experience to its customers while ensuring sustainable growth. Additionally, these solutions will enhance controls, increasing the bank’s ability to comply and achieve operational excellence.

We partnered successfully with

Systems Limited is a global technology public limited company founded in 1977 with the mission to offer holistic transformations to its clients.

Region

Middle East & Africa

Solutions

Core Banking
Financial Crime Mitigation

Sector

Business Banking
Challenger Banks
Corporate & Commercial Banking
Retail Banking

Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

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.

We chose Temenos as we needed the agility and speed of a SaaS solution, and only the Temenos Banking Cloud offered the breadth of financial services functionality to meet our current and future needs. Critically, it enables us to bring together digital lending for conventional and Islamic products on a single platform and seamlessly extend to full digital banking services. With Temenos, we will lead the way in bringing new and exciting digital financial products and services to all Malaysians.”

Thariq Usman Ahman, Deputy CEO at KAF Investment Bank

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

Region

Asia Pacific

Solutions

Cloud & SaaS
Core Banking

Sector

Business Banking
Challenger Banks
Islamic Banking
Retail Banking

Diners Club Ecuador

Expanding into a new market with cloud-based core banking and advanced analytics solutions

Quito, Ecuador

At a Glance

Go-live in four months
Can onboard new payment providers in weeks
Can process thousands of payment requests per second
Processes over €1.2 billion in payments annually
Realizing a 50% growth in card transactions year-on-year
Achieving 100% growth in payments volumes year-on-year

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.

It took us only four months from signing the contract to facilitating the first transaction in Temenos. That’s a pretty short time to market and was a real wow moment for us.”

– Mihails Kuznecovs, Chief Executive Officer at FINCI

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.

Temenos FCM’s integrated sanctions screening has made our life so much easier. It’s easy for our teams to adapt processes to local requirements. This was definitely another wow moment for us.”

– Mihails Kuznecovs, Chief Executive Officer at FINCI

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.

Temenos has allowed us to scale our business without sacrificing speed or reliability. We are growing with Temenos – it is such a valuable partner for us. We not only value the technology it provides, but also the team behind that technology and the community of partners, sponsors and banks it has created.”

– Mihails Kuznecovs, Chief Executive Officer at FINCI

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.”

Ultimately, we are operating in a market where technology is changing, consumer behavior is changing, and the behavior of fraudsters is changing. That means we must be agile and quick to adapt. That’s what our ongoing relationship with Temenos enables for us.”

– Mihails Kuznecovs, Chief Executive Officer at FINCI

Region

Europe

Solutions

Core Banking
Financial Crime Mitigation
Payments

Sector

Business Banking
Challenger Banks
Corporate & Commercial Banking

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