In a crowded marketplace, you need to think outside the box and offer something unique to succeed. That’s the challenge for Bank SinoPac operating in Taiwan, one of the most oversaturated banking markets in the Asia Pacific region. Part of Taiwanese finance group SinoPac Holdings, the bank serves individual and corporate clients and also operates in China, Hong Kong, Macao, Vietnam, and the United States.

Irene Huang, Chief Digital Officer, Bank SinoPac, explains: “We are competing against 38 commercial banks for a slice of a limited market. But there are opportunities, too. For example, there is high demand for digital and mobile banking services among younger people, especially those we call High Earners, Not Rich Yet or HENRYs, who form an important target demographic.”

One key component in Bank SinoPac’s strategy is a focus on digital innovation, as Irene Huang adds: “On the one hand, it’s about embedding new technologies, such as open APIs and artificial intelligence (AI). But it’s also about the right mindset, and always thinking of the customer experience when designing products. While many Taiwanese banks are conservative in their thinking, we adopt a more innovative approach.”

Taking the first steps on the transformation journey

This strategy dates back as far as 2009, when Bank SinoPac began to transform its core banking environment. To replace inflexible legacy systems, the bank selected Temenos core banking. They migrated previously data related to three million customers onto the platform. The move led to major efficiency gains: close of business (COB) processes ran 70 percent faster, and infrastructure costs were cut in half.

Entering the era of open banking

Since then, Bank SinoPac has worked with Temenos to upgrade the core platform in 2012 and 2020. The latest upgrade provided access to advanced API integration functionality, which enabled the bank to take advantage of the open finance initiative launched in Taiwan in 2020. The bank uses the open APIs to interface with the systems of 12 partner organizations and SinoPac Holdings subsidiaries.

For the internal teams at Bank SinoPac, Temenos solution has proved easy to use, as Irene Huang confirms: “Temenos core banking is a very intuitive platform. For example, the preconfigured components simplify work such as product development, eliminating the need for us to write lines of code.”

Developing a first-of-a-kind mobile banking app

Using Temenos core banking has enabled Bank SinoPac to push ahead with its innovation strategy. For example, the latest upgrade helped the bank achieve a threefold improvement in time to market for new services. The solution also helped the bank kick off the development of new digital banking services, such as the groundbreaking DAWHO app, which stands for Digital Account with Happiness and Opulence.

Irene Huang explains: “In Taiwan, banks typically offer mobile apps to manage only one service, such as savings or payments, causing a fragmented experience when users want to complete several different transactions. With DAWHO, we aimed for an ‘ecosystem’ approach that would offer customers a frictionless digital journey and enable them to access multiple services through one portal.”

In a first for the Taiwanese market, DAWHO integrates seven services: deposits, wealth management, foreign exchange, personal loans, mortgages, credit cards, and securities—all provided by Bank SinoPac or a SinoPac Holdings subsidiary. Temenos core banking processes all customer transactions made through the DAWHO app and enables the bank to create and deploy new product features.

Attracting an extra million customers

The DAWHO app has been a huge success, giving Bank SinoPac a valuable differentiator in the Taiwanese market. User feedback has been extremely positive, with satisfaction scores of 4.9 out of five on the Apple App Store. And in just over three years since the launch of DAWHO, the bank has seen 1.5 million customers open digital accounts—including 78 percent, or 1.17 million, net-new clients.

The app has helped Bank SinoPac to reach younger market segments, as Irene Huang notes: “Before the launch of DAWHO, the average age of our retail banking customers was 47. Today, it is 33—indicating that we have increased our appeal to generations Y and Z, including the HENRYs.”

This surge in customer numbers translates into a much bigger slice of the Taiwanese market. “We are now ranked number four in Taiwan in terms of digital banking account holders,” explains Irene Huang. “And overall, we have grown our market share from around five to ten percent since the rollout of DAWHO.”

Refining the digital experience

In the latest collaboration, Bank SinoPac is using Temenos digital banking to reshape and unify the user experience across all its digital delivery channels—including its e-banking web portal and mobile app, DACARD payments app, and integrated DAWHO app. The project is progressing well, and the bank expects to complete the enhancements and launch the new digital ecosystem early in 2024.

Irene Huang adds: “Our design team finds Temenos digital banking very useful for developing new layouts for our digital portals. They also highlight the value of Temenos Visualizer, which gives them the tools to create a consistent look and feel for all of our apps. Once live, we will be able to roll out updates to all four digital portals at once through Temenos digital banking, rather than having to run them separately.”

Established in 1996, Bank of Abyssinia is currently the largest privately held bank in Ethiopia, and plans to become the leading commercial bank in East Africa by 2030. To reach this milestone, the bank is on a mission to grow its customer base, boosting financial inclusion in the country and beyond.

Helping more Ethiopians access banking services

According to the National Bank of Ethiopia, 75 percent of Ethiopians don’t have a bank account and up to 40 percent of all bank branches in the country are located near to the capital. For many years, banks have struggled to expand their reach beyond urban centers as setting up and running branches in rural locations involves significant upfront capital expenditure and high operational costs.

However, market conditions are rapidly changing in Ethiopia, as more people gain regular and reliable access to the internet. Bank of Abyssinia identified an opportunity to help more people access financial services by building a 100 percent digital banking offering.

Addis Tadesse, Director for Application Management at Bank of Abyssinia, explains: “We’ve offered digital banking services for many years, but most of these services still required our customers to visit a branch at some stage – for instance, to bring identification to open new accounts. Also, some processes such as loan applications required in-person consultations. If we could make the experience completely digital, we would be able to reach underserved communities in remote areas and dramatically increase our market share.”

With no other bank in Ethiopia offering a fully digital service, Bank of Abyssinia decided to pioneer the new approach and searched for a technology partner to support its initiative. Crucially, the bank targeted a solution provider that would help it deliver a truly seamless digital experience and ensure that it could meet strict regulatory requirements for new digital banks set by the National Bank of Ethiopia.

Finding the perfect solution

Bank of Abyssinia decided to build 100 percent digital banking services with Temenos. At the same time, the bank chose to upgrade its Temenos core banking system to ensure that it could provide customers with the very latest innovations in both digital and in-branch banking.

Protecting against fraud

As the first bank in Ethiopia to launch entirely digital services, Bank of Abyssinia knew its new platform would be a potential target for fraudsters and cyber criminals. To safeguard against this risk, Bank of Abyssinia also decided to implement Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation—equipping the bank with the tools to spot and prevent illicit activity in near real-time.

Deepening partnerships

To achieve a rapid implementation, Bank of Abyssinia enlisted the support of Temenos business partner Xpert Digital to deploy Temenos digital banking, including the setup of an API integration with Idemia—the bank’s identity and security solution. Supported by Temenos and Xpert Digital, Temenos digital banking went live in just four months.

“Xpert Digital played a lead role in helping us design a digital banking ecosystem that is secure, reliable and, crucially, easy to use,” comments Addis Tadesse. “The Xpert Digital team went the extra mile by helping us to redesign key workflows for a completely digital environment incorporating best practices. For instance, they helped us to leverage integrations with Idemia to build efficient, highly secure and automated verification processes—allowing us to onboard customers rapidly and with confidence.”

Welcoming new digital customers

By building and launching end-to-end digital banking services with Temenos core and digital banking platforms, Bank of Abyssinia has significantly increased its customer base.

“Temenos gives us the tools we need to offer reliable, convenient and always-on digital banking services,” explains Addis Tadesse. “Today, through our Apollo service, customers can sign up for an account from their mobiles by submitting a video of themselves and a copy of their national identity card. With Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation and Idemia, we can run verification processes quickly and get new customers up and running with their new bank account within one day.”

Empowering more people to invest in their future

As well as offering digital account management services, Bank of Abyssinia enables customers to apply for loans via its mobile banking app—helping more people to access credit, as Addis Tadesse adds: “With Temenos digital banking, we can approve the loan and give our customer to their funds within a few seconds, as long as they meet our lending criteria, where previously this would take months.”

He concludes: “With Temenos, we’ve been able to bring a game-changing solution to the Ethiopian banking sector and empower our customers to bank with us confidently at any time and from any location. We look forward to strengthening our partnership with Temenos in the years ahead as we continue to develop our digital banking offerings and help more customers manage their money effectively.”

We partnered successfully with Xpert Digital

Xpert Digital (XD) is a Certified Temenos Services Partner specializing in delivering exceptional digital experiences by creatively nurturing innovation with technology.

Learn more about Xpert Digital

At a glance

• 3 months to migrate major acquisitions to Temenos core banking
• 45 days to launch branch operations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from scratch
• 50% efficiency gains in the back-office support highly cost-effective growth
• 49% rise in profits in 2022, a new record for Capital Bank
• 12 months for the subsidiary National Bank of Iraq to go live with Temenos core banking and payments hub
• Processed 188,000 payments in the first month after launch, with 99% STP rate

Established in 1995, the Capital Bank of Jordan (Capital Bank) specializes in commercial and investment banking services for retail and corporate clients. Capital Bank has developed into one of the top financial institutions in Jordan, and has built a strong regional presence through expansion into markets including Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

A spokesperson at the bank, says: “The last three years have been remarkable for our business. We’ve grown in Jordan to become the 3^rd largest bank, rising from the 15^th position in 2020, We also currently rank among the 50 largest banks in the Middle East.”

How has Capital Bank made such an impressive rise? With a strategy aimed at driving rapid expansion across local and regional markets, fueled and sustained by the bank’s longstanding partnership with Temenos.

Bringing on big acquisitions

Capital Bank has counted on Temenos core banking technology for more than a decade. As the bank ramped up its growth plans, it knew that its core banking model also needed to evolve.

A spokesperson at the bank explains: “In 2020, we began negotiations to acquire Bank Audi’s operations in Jordan and Iraq. They were a bank of similar size to us, so it was a serious undertaking, effectively doubling our operations. We wanted to bring them onto our Temenos core banking system, and we decided to upgrade to the latest release of Temenos in preparation for the integration.”

The upgrade primed Capital Bank to take advantage of a more modern system architecture and all-new functionality. It paved the way for a swift, smooth integration of the Bank Audi business; in all, it took between three to four months to complete the core banking migration.

Capital Bank’s expansion strategy took another leap forward in late 2022, with the acquisition completion of Société Générale Bank Jordan. Once more, Capital Bank was able to migrate the new business’ core banking operations to Temenos in a span of just three months. This allowed the bank to minimize disruption to both employees and customers, while unlocking the benefits of a larger operational footprint sooner.

Deepening and expanding the partnership

With these latest acquisitions under its belt, Capital Bank turned its attention to a more established part of its business: the National Bank of Iraq. Acquired in 2005, the National Bank of Iraq deal has allowed Capital Bank to make inroads into an important regional market.

Until 2022, the bank had been running on a legacy core banking system. In that year, Capital Bank decided to also migrate the bank’s end-to-end operations to the Temenos core banking platform. At the same time, it also deployed the Temenos Payments Hub (TPH) at National Bank of Iraq, the first bank in its suite of companies to adopt the solution.

The relative size of the National Bank of Iraq (about twice as big as Capital Bank), and deploying TPH, made the project more complex than previous migrations. Yet it was completed within one year, noting that the project also involved bringing more than 25 third-party vendor integrations, deployment of four other brand-new systems, configuration of new automations, including with the central bank of Iraq, and translation of the system into Arabic. With all the testing completed, the actual migration was delivered in December 2023, taking 96hrs, with all the planned capabilities, dashboards, and metrics available from day one of go-live.

The work was led by one in-house project manager, with Temenos and ITSS Egypt, a Temenos partner, providing support.

The bank didn’t have to wait long to see the impact. In the first month after go-live, it processed 188,923 incoming and outgoing domestic and international payments, with a 99% STP rate. The project was also named ‘Best Core Banking Implementation: Best Project Implementation’ by IBSi as part of their 2023 Innovation Awards.

The partnership with Temenos has supported  Capital Bank establish additional presence in Saudi Arabia. Two years ago, National Bank of Iraq received a banking license to launch a new branch in Riyadh, the country’s capital city. To get operations at the site up and running and start accepting customer transactions, the bank implemented a new instance of Temenos core banking, going live in just 45 days.

Recipe for success

A spokesperson at the bank is in no doubt about the game-changing nature of its expansion of Temenos to the National Bank of Iraq.

Reflecting on the project, Izzidin Abusalameh points to several crucial factors. On the technical side, the availability of pre-configured out-of-the-box capabilities within both Temenos core banking and TPH meant the team could avoid building complex customizations. He also points to the value of having a meticulous project plan from the outset, detailing thousands of tasks, that acted as a reference throughout the project and ensured clarity and accountability at all times.

Culture was also an ingredient of success, says a spokesperson at the bank, “We had the right people, with relevant skills, experience and spirit, and enabled by our board with authority to make quick decisions.”

Supporting stellar operations

With Temenos core banking now deployed throughout its businesses, Capital Bank has a trusted and powerful platform for supporting its full range of banking products and services across retail, corporate, asset management, and more. When the bank wishes to enhance existing services or introduce all-new products, it uses Temenos to simplify and accelerate the process.

“Temenos core banking makes life easy for us,” confirms a spokesperson at the bank. “It’s essential for us, providing all the capabilities we need to support our banking operations. When we are building a new product or implementing a new bank business model, we put as much on the core as possible, because we know that Temenos is capable of supporting it.” In Temenos, Capital Bank has found a partner it can count on to keep expanding and improving this core banking universe.

Free to grow

Enabled by Temenos, Capital Bank has been able to grow without limits, adding new products, and winning more customers all while controlling cost and complexity. As operations have expanded, the bank has simultaneously lifted back-office efficiency by at least 50 percent.

The efficiency gains translate into a better experience for Capital Bank’s rapidly growing customer base. They can count on transactions to be processed quickly and accurately, and for service requests to be handled promptly. It allowed the bank to maintain high customer retention levels—crucial to the long-term success of its acquisitions—and to cultivate a reputation for service excellence that’s helping it win even more new business.

Fit for the future

Capital Bank’s hard work over the past three years has led to impressive financial results, including record profits with a 17% increase over the previous year. The bank considers Temenos to be an important contributor to this success, and an integral part of its plans for the future. No surprise then that it plans to upgrade all its banks to the latest release 23 of the Temenos core banking throughout 2024 and extend TPH to Capital Bank of Jordan as well.

A spokesperson at the bank continues: “We have big plans for the coming years and wherever that journey takes us, we know that Temenos will be accompanying us. Through all our growth and change, Temenos core banking has been the one constant.”

We partnered successfully with ITSSA:

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

Learn more about ITSS

With offices in Sydney and Brisbane, Alex Bank is a 100 percent digital challenger bank, committed to providing customers in Australia with faster, fairer, and more flexible financial solutions. Alex Bank serves individuals and small businesses across the country with a range of retail and commercial banking products.

Simon Beitz, CEO of Alex Bank, takes up the story: “Our domestic market is dominated by four banks with a combined market share of around 85 percent. We surveyed 2,500 prospective customers about their frustrations with their current banks. We found that one of the biggest pain points was slow service. With legacy banks, applications for savings accounts, loans, and mortgages can often take several weeks to complete. We saw an opportunity to shape higher-quality retail and commercial banking experiences by removing the friction from these journeys.”

Targeting the optimal core banking platform

As a newly authorized deposit-taking institution (ADI) licensed by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA), Alex Bank looked for the optimal technology stack to help it deliver outstanding customer experiences. Compliant, always-on digital services were a must, and the bank targeted a core banking platform that could support its long-term goals.

Building a platform for service innovation

To lay the foundation for next-generation services, Alex Bank selected Temenos core banking on Temenos SaaS, deployed on a resilient and highly available platform.

“We evaluated potential vendors against several criteria, including industry experience, access to support, and a proven track record of successful deployments,” recalls Beitz. “Temenos met all our operational and technical requirements for a new core banking platform. As well as having global reach, Temenos has a very strong footprint in Australia, which gave us the confidence we could get effective support whenever we needed it. Temenos core banking can be customized flexibly and deployed rapidly, which allows us to address stringent regulatory requirements without sacrificing our challenger bank agility.”

Accelerating deployment, reducing costs

By deploying Temenos core banking on SaaS, Alex Bank accelerated its core banking implementation while avoiding the significant capital and operational costs associated with deploying an on-premises infrastructure.

Beitz elaborates: “Temenos SaaS offers us many advantages over an on-premises approach. With managed services from Temenos, we are free from the burden of maintaining our infrastructure, which empowers staff to add value in other areas of the business. We can also scale Temenos core banking quickly and easily as we grow—a big advantage for a challenger bank. Crucially, Temenos SaaS offers us mature security and high availability capabilities, giving us the peace of mind that our organization and our customers are always protected.”

Unlocking vital insights

Working with an expert team from Temenos, Alex Bank leveraged the solution’s built-in tools to tailor its banking products to meet the needs and expectations of its target market, and to design Temenos Analytics reports to deliver business insights to management and leadership teams.

 “We can modify business rules in Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation with minimal support from Temenos, saving time and effort and helping us to keep pace with the needs of the business.”

Rocketing ahead in the Australian market

Through its collaboration with Temenos, Alex Bank is rapidly establishing itself as one of Australia’s fastest-growing financial organizations.

“Our goal isn’t simply to offer slightly faster services than our banking competitors,” explains Beitz. “We want to deliver experiences that match the speed and convenience of our customers’ favorite brands — for example, e-commerce retailers. To realize our vision, we’ve designed every stage of every journey with the customer experience at the center.”

Providing decisions in seconds

By combining the capabilities of Temenos core banking with its own AI technologies, the bank is delivering lending decisions and onboarding customers within minutes, speeding ahead of its competitors.

“We have created a smart, real-time credit decisioning system called Alex Intelligence™, which uses data analytics to accurately assess an applicant’s credit risk,” explains Beitz. “For unsecured loans, we’ve compressed the entire customer application process down to two minutes and 40 seconds. When a customer applies via their digital device, we can give them a decision significantly faster than our competitors and deposit the money to their account within as little as three hours. We’ve since expanded to secured personal loans, and next we plan to build a similar offering for small business owners.”

Nurturing customer loyalty

Alex Bank’s relentless focus on the customer experience is already paying dividends. The organization is racing ahead of its competitors with a Trustpilot TrustScore of 4.8/5, far exceeding the banking category average of 3.4/5.

“We are now measuring a satisfaction score of 81.7/100 on Trustpilot, which shows that our approach is really resonating with our customers,” says Beitz. “Our growth trajectory is so steep that we’re often breaking our own daily records for new lending and deposits. Since ADI issued in 21DEC22, deposits have increased by 2100 percent and lending has grown by 66 percent. These results contributed to Alex Bank receiving Fast Starter awards from both Deloitte and the Australian Financial Review.”

Planning for the future

Looking ahead, Alex Bank plans to work with Temenos to bring its mortgage offering for small business owners to market, and the bank expects to achieve profitable operations within a matter of months.

One of the largest financial groups in Latin America with operations in the Dominican Republic and Panama, Qik combines more than five decades of banking experience with the operational agility and cutting-edge digital experiences enabled by the Temenos platform. Part of Grupo Popular, Qik launched Qik Banco Digital Dominicano on Temenos Banking Cloud, becoming the first digital-only bank in the Dominican Republic. The launch of Qik on the Temenos Banking Cloud with consultative support from ITSS will enable the bank to quickly establish a presence in the Dominican Republic, planning to onboard up to thousands of people in the first year. With instant access to packaged banking services via software-as-a-service (SaaS) on Temenos Banking Cloud, Qik can meet the emerging needs of digital customers with the highest technological, security and service standards, built around the way customers live their daily lives.

Qik will be able to measure, reduce and report on their emissions with BI data, so that they can comply with regulations, address the changing needs of their customers and reach their sustainability targets. The bank will also utilized Temenos core banking and payments services on a pay-as-you-go basis, as it launches products from debit accounts to savings to personal loans across the Dominican Republic. The open and flexible platform will empower Qik to quickly design and deliver innovative products and services.

We partnered successfully with

ITSS has encompassed over two decades of consulting and business expertise, serving integrated global banking software services to banks and financial institutions across Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.

Learn more about ITSS

One of MENA’s leading international banks, Bank ABC will replace its legacy core banking systems for its network of operations serving customers in twenty-five markets from fifteen countries worldwide with a single instance of the Temenos platform. Temenos and Systems will replace its core banking systems for its retail, corporate and wholesale businesses and furthermore power its subsidiary, ila Bank, the MENA region’s fast-growing digital mobile-only bank. Consolidating multiple back-end systems on the Temenos platform in the Cloud will enable Bank ABC to drive scalable efficiency, with a single dashboard and complete 360-degree customer view across business lines and geographies.

The first phase of the project is the implementation of Temenos retail core banking solution and origination on digital banking for ila Bank. Subsequently, Bank ABC will leverage Temenos’ cloud-native solutions and its open and API-first architecture for easy extensibility and open banking integration to enhance the experience and the services delivered to its customers. The project will see the gradual transformation of the Group-wide core banking infrastructure, enabling Bank ABC to benefit from Temenos’ broad set of banking functionality and lower operational cost across its retail and wholesale banking operations.

We partnered successfully with Systems Limited

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

Learn more about Systems Limited

Meezan Bank has achieved a meteoric rise to become the largest Islamic bank in Pakistan. Initially established as an investment bank, Meezan Bank became the first Islamic commercial bank of Pakistan in 2002, with a comprehensive range of Shariah-compliant retail, business, treasury, trade finance, and corporate banking services.

Ali Imran Khan, Deputy Chief Information Officer at Meezan Bank explains: “We aim to be first choice for people seeking financial services without compromising on their faith. By bringing our offerings to more consumers, we hope to improve financial inclusion and create a more equitable society.”

In recent years, the Islamic banking market in Pakistan has become increasingly popular. Although Meezan Bank is the pioneer, there are now many other Islamic and conventional banks with Shariah-compliant offerings. So how has Meezan Bank managed to rise so quickly and maintain its status as the premier Islamic bank in Pakistan? One key factor has been the Bank’s longstanding focus on strengthening its technological infrastructure. Over the years, the Bank has held a longstanding partnership with Temenos.

Aiming for a streamlined and scalable approach

In the years following its launch, Meezan Bank saw consistent growth in customer volumes, deposits, and transactions. Gradually, though, as the Bank’s popularity grew over time so did its demands for an efficient technology strategy. At that time, each branch ran its own servers to record and process transactions. But as the bank expanded to more than 150 locations, there was a need for a more sustainable, less complex and costly solution.

Ali Imran Khan continues: “Our legacy core banking system was decentralized. Customer data was not stored centrally and we had to do extra efforts to enable the online transactions. We continued to add hardware when we opened a branch, which resulted in managing hundreds of servers, taking up valuable time and resources.”

Harnessing a centralized core system

To maintain its upwards growth trajectory, Meezan Bank looked to replace its legacy systems with a powerful, centralized core banking platform. After assessing potential solutions, the bank chose Temenos core banking, engaging Temenos business partner Systems Limited to plan and manage the implementation.

During the deployment, Systems Limited helped to familiarize users at Meezan Bank with the tools in Temenos core banking, as Ali Imran Khan confirms: “It’s important to have knowledgeable partners for large-scale projects. Systems Limited and Temenos were excellent: they not only resolved any issues/challenges faced, but also helped us build our internal skillset.”

Enabling seamless fintech integrations

Today, Meezan Bank uses the full suite of modules within Temenos core banking to support its operations—from deposits and treasury services to Islamic trade finance. The bank is also exploring using the open API capabilities of the Temenos platform to integrate with third-party solutions.

Ali Imran Khan adds: “Islamic fintechs are a growth market in Pakistan, especially in payments and financing. We have already connected our core platform with services from one startup, and we know that it will be quick and easy to onboard others. In time, we expect the Pakistani market to move towards Open Banking; Through continuous investment in digital infrastructure and innovation, we aim to pioneer the future of banking, making it more accessible, convenient, and customer-centric. Temenos core banking gives us the integration capabilities we will need to capitalize on the shift.”

Expanding the scope for innovation

Using Temenos core banking, the bank integrated the core platform with its digital and mobile channels to enable customers to access their accounts, check transactions, and make payments anytime, anywhere.

Meezan Bank can now launch a product in 3 to 4 months’ time, previously, it was more than a year.

Reaching millions of customers

Replacing distributed legacy systems with a centralized core platform has made expanding the bank’s branch network much easier. Now, the bank simply onboards new locations to the platform, without adding local infrastructure. Meezan Bank had around 200 branches when Temenos was deployed; it now has more than 1000 across Pakistan.

Enhanced services and a wider branch network have contributed to a much larger customer base: Meezan Bank has more than 4.5 million customers and is now the most profitable Pakistani bank. Meezan Bank also continues to lead the Islamic banking market, with a 33 percent share—When Temenos was deployed, Meezan Bank had just reached the top 15 banks in Pakistan, with deposits of PKR 100 billion; today, it is ranked number four, with deposits of PKR 1.66 trillion. On the digital front, Meezan bank’s transaction volume are growing, with 90% more online transactions than over-the-counter transactions.

Ali Imran Khan continues: “Temenos core banking has been one of the important components in our phenomenal growth. The platform allows us to innovate and seamlessly manage much higher transaction volumes.”

Winning international recognition

Meezan Bank’s success has brought plaudits within Pakistan and beyond. The bank has been named as the ‘Best Bank’ – (2018 & 2020) and ‘Best Consumer Bank’ (2022) at the most prestigious Pakistan Banking Awards by IBP Pakistan, as well as being heralded by prestigious international publications such as Global Finance, Asiamoney and The Banker.

We partnered successfully with Systems Limited

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

Learn more about Systems Limited

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.

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.

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.

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.

We partnered successfully with AWS

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.

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Baiduri Bank is one of the largest providers of financial products and services in Brunei, and serves diverse customer segments ranging from retail, MSMEs to corporate and institutional clients. The Bank offers a comprehensive suite of digital solutions including an award-winning mobile banking app and dedicated business digital banking service. The bank will adopt Temenos banking services for core banking, data analytics and financial crime mitigation (FCM) to support its retail and corporate banking, finance and wealth management operations. With this move, Baiduri Bank will be the first bank in Brunei to operate its core banking platform in the cloud under the SaaS model.

Replacing legacy systems with Temenos modern SaaS on Microsoft Azure will enable Baiduri Bank to offer superior customer propositions with personalized offerings at a fraction of the time and cost. The move to Temenos Banking Cloud will commence in 2023, led by Temenos implementation partner Tech Mahindra. Temenos Banking Cloud allows Baiduri Bank to progressively renovate its IT landscape using a composable banking approach to deploy new services faster, more cost-effectively, and at scale.

Established in 1975 as a public shareholding company, Invest Bank offers a wide range of financial products and services for corporate as well as retail banking. Invest Bank intends to leverage Temenos’ event-driven open-API architecture and extensibility framework to go beyond banking and create a lifestyle services platform. The premier commercial bank in UAE, has selected Temenos to take its digital and core banking to the cloud in partnership with Systems.

Invest Bank will adopt an end-to-end retail and wholesale banking solution on the Temenos Banking Cloud, becoming one of the first in the UAE to adopt a full SaaS model for its digital and core banking platform. The front-to-back capabilities of digital banking and core banking delivered as SaaS on Temenos’ open platform for composable banking will enable Invest Bank to modernize legacy platforms, bring new products and services to market faster, as well as deliver more innovative customer experiences. Planned enhancements include instant onboarding and origination with automated approvals based on AI-based rules. The bank will also use the Temenos platform to improve operational efficiency with increased automation and digitized workflows.

We partnered successfully with Systems Limited

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

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