Sector: Wealth Management
Hamilton Reserve Bank
Becoming the largest global bank headquartered in the Caribbean through end-to-end digital transformation
Nevis, Saint Kitts and Nevis
At a Glance
- US$2 billion+ in total assets, after deploying Temenos solutions in only 9 months
- Record time in launching Temenos LEAP and Temenos Digital Banking in 7 months
- 800% growth in total deposit, custodian assets, a pristine BSA/AML compliance history
- 140% growth in client base in the first six months since deploying the Temenos solutions
- 620% growth in revenues and net income, robust AI-powered compliance programs
- Cuts fully compliant new client onboarding 100% online via STP from 5 days to 20 minutes for individuals and 1 day for businesses
- Real time bank SWIFT wires, including 3rd party wires executed in 5 seconds in 126 currencies
- 250% lift in operational efficiency and staff productivity
Hamilton Reserve Bank combines the investment and commercial banking expertise of Wall Street financial strength and execution efficiency with a strong British heritage. Since 1994, the bank or its affiliates have offered a wide range of integrated services to a worldwide clientele from more than 150 countries, including private and business banking, asset protection, custodian banking, wealth management, trust and escrow services, family offices, investment banking, and new business formation. Accepting deposits in multiple global currencies and digital assets, Hamilton Reserve Bank is a truly global bank with offices and representatives located around the world.
Akinnia Glasgow, Senior Manager, Business and Private Banking of Hamilton Reserve Bank, explains: “With a global workforce, we are headquartered on a sprawling 12-acre bank campus in Saint Kitts and Nevis, the birthplace of America’s founding father Alexander Hamilton. Our staff comes from 13 countries, speaking 15 different languages, and 80% of our colleagues are female. We serve clients from more than 150 countries, communicate in 13 languages and accept deposits and payments in 126 different currencies. Our client mix is 65% businesses and 35% individuals. We are always looking to expand through advanced financial technology. For example, we have presence in Asia, Panama, Dubai, other MENA regions, EU, North and South America, and Africa. Across our 24/7 operations around the globe, we pursue a client-first philosophy, working tirelessly to improve the prosperity of the individual and business customers that rely on us daily for their banking needs.”
Hamilton Reserve Bank strives to create products tailored to meet the unique requirements of its global clients that value speed, safety, and privacy. Similarly, the bank aims to make every client interaction an easy, fast, secure, and frictionless experience — from new account onboarding 100% online to fast payments executed in seconds and 24/7 digital access allowing multiple signers and controls in omnibus accounts; all backed up with robust security, privacy, and top compliance measures. The bank chose Temenos for its highly reputable and dependable core banking system with exceptional transaction and real-time monitoring capabilities demanded by large global correspondent banks.
“Our previous core banking tools had limited integration capabilities,” adds Akinnia Glasgow. “Key processes such as manual client onboarding could take 5 days for staff to approve account applications. As customer onboarding exploded with many new account applications waiting to be processed, we had to scale our global operations through a fresh approach. The flexible Temenos modules became our solution after we had rejected many others. We signed an 11-year agreement with Temenos as a key partner and devoted a US$30 million IT budget to build a large bank well positioned to serve a worldwide client base. We are very pleased and have not looked back since.”
Implemented full-scale systems modernization through facial recognition technology
Hamilton Reserve Bank planned a comprehensive overhaul of its core and client-facing solutions. From an internal perspective, the bank decided to implement Straight-Through Processing (STP) to improve the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of back-office workflows. Through Temenos STP, the bank has seen growth up to 800% in total deposit and custodian assets. Similarly, the bank knew that sophisticated authentication tools would ensure accurate KYC and real time transaction monitoring, meeting stringent compliance targets while mitigating operational risk.
“For new clients, we target a streamlined and fully compliant application journey that has enabled seamless onboarding within minutes,” continues Prabhakar Kaza, the London-based CEO of Hamilton Reserve Bank who has 40 years of banking experience. “And we wanted to enrich our service portfolio, adding advanced functionality such as processing 126 different customer deposit currencies and digital assets in real time, as well as 24/7 digital account access verified through government-grade facial recognition solutions.”
“Since adopting Temenos, Hamilton Reserve Bank has not had a single incident of wire payment loss of any sort due to mistaken identities. Our customers initiate wire transfers online via facial recognition that automatically matches their valid passports already on file. All wire details must be entered directly by our customers. The bank only processes wires submitted in the highly secure and identity verified Temenos environment.”
– Sebastian Ambrose, Senior Regulatory and AML Counsel at Hamilton Reserve Bank
Deployed fully integrated Temenos solutions in record time of 9 months
To support a rapidly expanding global clientele, Hamilton Reserve Bank looked for a technology partner with the latest market-leading core and digital banking solutions. After evaluating many vendors, the bank selected Temenos to concurrently deploy Temenos Core, Temenos Digital, Temenos Payments, and Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation, and has since also installed the latest Temenos Digital and Temenos LEAP modules (2024 version) to automate business customer onboarding, reducing 24/7 client onboarding time from one day to one hour — providing end-to-end capabilities covering product development, client acquisition, compliance, risk management, and more. This has positioned Hamilton Reserve Bank as one of the first in the world to offer a full range of the latest Temenos solutions to its clientele.
Adrian Joseph, an IT manager at Hamilton Reserve Bank comments: “Temenos offers an outstanding breadth of functionality that has helped improve our operations and grow our client base. It allows Hamilton Reserve Bank to integrate with many other solution partners such as Mastercard Cross-Border Services, our direct correspondent banks including Banco Santander, The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), among others, giving our bank flexibility and agility to drive both financial and compliance KPIs. We also love that Temenos is continuously updating its solutions which has enabled Hamilton Reserve Bank’s core banking software and other modules to operate on the latest Temenos solutions.”
Launching Temenos, Hamilton Reserve Bank dedicated a large IT budget and went live in just nine months. The bank’s operational level has considerably increased the asset base and employee productivity that has also translated into greater margins while achieving stellar regulatory compliance. These efforts have significantly enhanced the bank’s revenue growth. The bank harnessed resources from the Temenos Learning Community (TLC) to concurrently train employees, as Adrian Joseph explains: “The TLC provided excellent learning tools that enabled us to build a thorough knowledge of the solutions quickly and has facilitated adoption among our worldwide staff.”
Delivered ultra-secure, tailored banking services in record speed of 9 months
Powered by Temenos, Hamilton Reserve Bank has achieved new milestones including its recent entry into new markets, expanded many correspondent banking relationships, and winning several prestigious awards recognizing the bank’s advanced fintech advantage.
“Temenos has made it possible for us to process multicurrency wires in real time via SWIFT gpi while we fully comply with regulations from around the world.”
– Merkisha Desir, Senior private banking manager at Hamilton Reserve Bank.
Using Temenos Core and Temenos Digital, Hamilton Reserve Bank has consolidated its back-office operations and digital banking services into a highly efficient ticketing system shared among its colleagues located on several continents. The solutions enable the bank to automate many processes and offer clients instant, round-the-clock anytime banking access, as well as a wider range of customized products. For example, the bank is developing new wealth management solutions using Temenos Enterprise Wealth in collaboration with The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), the world’s largest bank by custodian assets and Rosenblatt Securities, the largest floor trading firm on the New York Stock Exchange.
With Temenos Payments, Hamilton Reserve Bank now has the capabilities to offer lightning speed cross-border payments to its global clientele. “We can process millions in client transactions every year. Temenos Payments gives us the scalability and sophisticated functionality that we need to provide real-time multicurrency payment options and handle large volumes of transactions quickly, efficiently, and securely,” adds Ghassan Nasr, CEO of International Markets at Hamilton Reserve Bank.
Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation (“FCM”) enables Hamilton Reserve Bank to scan all account applications and transactions in real time, assigning risk scores to all customer accounts to detect suspicious activities, and timely filing regulatory reports as needed. The risk-based FCM solution has allowed the bank to pinpoint specific compliance risks while significantly reducing costs and human errors. Thanks to the Temenos FCM, Hamilton Reserve Bank successfully passes annual BSA/AML/KYC independent compliance audits.
Albert Rodriguez, the Chief Operating Officer of Hamilton Reserve Bank notes: “With the fully installed FCM product family operating at great speed, the bank has automated all client screening processes, helping us to detect potential compliance issues in real time. As we continue to innovate through artificial intelligence, the new Temenos FCM AI agent will come in handy. As we frequently fine-tune our BSA/AML/KYC/KYCC rules within FCM, Hamilton Reserve Bank has maintained a solid compliance record since inception.”
Fast, secure, and privacy – enhancing customer experience throughout
Thanks to Temenos Digital, Hamilton Reserve Bank has accelerated new customer onboarding 24/7 which is now 100% online and self-directed by an account applicant. Back-office automation has improved onboarding speed by 400 percent. Business account applications that previously took five days are now completed in one day. Personal account applications are processed even faster: applicants can finish the entire self-directed onboarding journey 100% online in as short as 20 minutes, fast, safe, and compliant.
“Our enhanced services and online experience have led to excellent client feedback. We have seen a 100% increase in our customer satisfaction ratings since Temenos was installed, with clients valuing the service speed, deposit safety, and asset protection features that we offer. While banking online in a secure and private environment, self-directed customer transactions including internal account balance transfers among related accounts can be completed in seconds, including third party payments.”
– Sir Tony Baldry, Chairman of Hamilton Reserve Bank
The partnership with Temenos has also enabled Hamilton Reserve Bank to accomplish its growth objectives, with a 140 percent increase in client growth within six months after the initial implementation in 2020. The move to a modern, scalable suite of core and digital banking tools provides a robust foundation for rapid international market expansion as the bank is currently experiencing.
“Working with Temenos makes us a highly competitive bank in the global financial markets, with a strong value proposition and high quality of service for our personal and business banking clients,” confirms Howard Anthony Lewis, an enterprise risk specialist and a board member of Hamilton Reserve Bank. “Harnessing the Temenos solutions has positioned Hamilton Reserve Bank as a leading innovator bank, helping us to become the largest global bank headquartered in the Caribbean powered by advanced fintech maintaining a spotless regulatory compliance history.”
Streamlined back-office workflows achieved record financial results
The adoption of Temenos solutions has unlocked major efficiency and productivity gains for Hamilton Reserve Bank. Product teams now build and launch tailored services faster, while automating screening and compliance tasks has freed employees from repetitive manual work—saving time while eliminating human errors. Overall, the bank believes the Temenos system has improved internal efficiency by more than 250%, helping to reduce operational costs significantly. Strategic expansion now centers on Temenos Wealth and Temenos AI, as Hamilton Reserve Bank deepens its collaboration with its correspondent banking partners, The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), Banco Santander and others to expand global asset custody and deliver sophisticated banking solutions.
“Temenos is an excellent core banking product. The solutions provide a fully integrated digital ecosystem that enables us to accurately deliver client-centric services to our rapidly expanding global customer base, enabling the bank to deliver record financial results year after year. Temenos is now integrated into our marketing programs for client origination and customer satisfaction. As we undertake additional Temenos module enhancements, we are looking forward to working with Temenos for many years to come. Successful banking is all about competent technology. Hamilton Reserve Bank is very pleased to have Temenos on our side.”
– Antonio Kenyatta, the Chief Financial Officer at Hamilton Reserve Bank
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
At a Glance
- Temenos Wealth has created efficiency improvements to portfolio management, client reporting, and digital front-end tooling
- Single code base enables multiple executions from a single development environment
- TPH is a high-performing payment engine and contributing to a significant increase in volume capability
- Temenos Continuous Deployment enables overnight regression for all the functional areas, hitting a 100% pass rate with a single touch
ABN AMRO is one of the leading banks in the Netherlands with a significant international presence. With its roots going back 200 years, the Dutch financial services institution today provides banking services to millions of individuals and businesses, with a primary focus on the Netherlands and Northwest Europe. The bank is also a global leader in clearing.
The institution offers a range of products and services – including business loans, mortgages, savings, investment products, and payment services – across three divisions: personal and business banking, wealth management, and corporate banking.
Its strategy for growth is centered around three key pillars; customer experience, sustainability, and future-proof banking. These provide the foundation for bank’s mission to provide “Banking for better, for generations to come”, based on a fundamental vision of “becoming a personal bank in the digital age for the resourceful and ambitious”.
Strength in collaboration
ABN AMRO’s partnership with Temenos has been important to delivering on this vision. The journey with Temenos began almost two decades ago, when ABN AMRO started leveraging Temenos Wealth Front Office (previously ‘Triple A’) to update its legacy private banking environment. This collaboration has since expanded with Temenos core banking for its corporate and private banking business and continued further with the co-development of Temenos Payments Hub. The introduction of Temenos Continuous Deployment (TCD) running on the Temenos SaaS is the partnership’s most recent milestone.
Bas van As, ABN AMRO’s Head of International Core Banking, highlights that the benefit of this long-term partnership has been “to bring consistency and standardization to our technology stack and so make it easier to innovate and modernize.”
World class wealth management
Temenos Wealth Front Office, which is deployed in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Belgium, has resulted in efficiency improvements to portfolio management, client reporting, and digital front-end tooling. The bank has also leveraged the sustainability insights made available from the solution to improve the guidance given by its relationship managers and advisors to clients.
Moreover, by using the same code base across its operations, the bank has been able to create multiple executions from a single development environment. It has been putting this capability to good use. Just recently, in Germany, the bank rolled out the Discretionary Portfolio Management (DPM) and has scheduled advisory services to go live in the near future.
Marnix Tummers, the bank’s IT Director of Wealth Management, explains that this single code base has also achieved efficiencies in other areas, such as lifecycle management, information security, and regulatory compliance. On the latter, he says: “Regulations and standards are forever evolving, within a jurisdiction and also between them. Temenos embeds these changes to its software, which empowers us to remain adaptable in fulfilling our compliance obligations in all our markets.” And on top of increased efficiency, scalability improves as well.
“Technology allows ABN AMRO to innovate quickly by bringing new features to clients and simultaneously strengthen regulatory compliance, which is also at the heart of what Temenos is striving for.”
Marnix Tummers, IT Director of Wealth Management at ABN AMRO
Composability at the core
Temenos core banking provides a stable platform that runs across multiple business lines in multiple countries and markets, all from a single instance, which has become integral to the bank’s efficiency and performance goals. Initially, it was deployed in international corporate business and later in European corporate and private banking operations.
These advancements reflect ABN AMRO’s ongoing commitment to simplicity, or what Bas calls ‘hygiene’. “Our solutions need to be available, safe, and compliant. So, it remains incredibly important that we have a stable and reliable core banking system, because it also allows us to focus on managing our legacy technology effectively,” says Bas.
Marnix echoes those sentiments, pointing out that
“The Temenos platform’s design—a single codebase, API architecture, and suite of pre-integrated modules—delivers operational efficiencies and scalability, with the flexibility needed to tailor solutions and products for individual countries.”
Marnix Tummers, IT Director of Wealth Management at ABN AMRO
Adoption and integration of new capabilities is far easier, including access to third-party providers via the Temenos Exchange. In turn, it allows the bank to decouple outdated systems.
Cutting edge payments
Building on the success of the core modernization, ABN AMRO also looked to enhance its payments processing capabilities. The bank co-developed Temenos Payments Hub (TPH) together with Temenos as a centralized, global payments hub. Fully integrated with Temenos core banking, the solution enables real-time cross-border and domestic payments, supports various payment types, and processes complex transactions.
TPH continues to keep ABN AMRO at the forefront of the payments industry; it is a high-performing payment engine and contributing to a significant increase in volume capability. As Bas explains, “Especially in the payment area, among others, we have tried to leverage the product as much as we possibly can, and that has been truly beneficial.”
Engine for innovation
In its latest collaboration with Temenos, ABN AMRO has introduced Temenos Continuous Deployment (TCD) running on Temenos SaaS. Its DevOps teams use TCD to provision test environments, automate test cycles, and accelerate the delivery of innovative new client services.
They are now able to run overnight regression for all the functional areas, hitting a 100% pass rate with a single touch. “It’s an incredible achievement,” notes Bas.
“TCD gives us an agility and speed to market that we didn’t have before, which brings a lot more opportunities into play.”
Bas van As, Head of International Core Banking at ABN AMRO
Pioneering AI-Driven Banking Transformation
ABN AMRO views AI as a powerful force for transformation, unlocking new opportunities across its banking operations. According to Marnix “AI not just as a trend, but a foundational technology that can enhance efficiency, drive innovation, and open up new possibilities for customer engagement and operational excellence.” In partnership with Temenos, which is actively embedding AI capabilities into both its Core and Wealth platforms, ABN AMRO will be leveraging these advancements to future-proof its systems and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving financial landscape. This strategic alignment ensures that AI is not only integrated into their technology stack but also plays a key role in shaping the bank’s long-term vision for smarter, more adaptive banking.
People-led partnership
The story of ABN AMRO’s nearly two decades of partnership with Temenos has been one of transformation and growth. It has also been characterized by both technology and people. “We talk about technology being innovative, but that’s only achieved by innovative thinkers. People who think ahead and predict what we’re going to need. That ability to stay on top of things—be it technical innovations or regulations—is a really valuable aspect of our partnership with Temenos,” says Bas.
“Temenos’ people are key. Its services, products, and account management teams have really been outstanding. They have enabled us to be very agile and deliver with speed and confidence. That was exemplified when the bank pivoted to concentrate its growth efforts on Northwest Europe, and the partnership allowed for a smooth adjustment. We were able to do that knowing that Temenos could flex with us and so minimize any disruption.”
Marnix Tummers, IT Director of Wealth Management at ABN AMRO
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
At a Glance
• Successful front-to-back ‘big bang’ implementation in Cyprus
• New product launch cycles halved to under one week
• 90% STP increased payment volumes to 120,000 per month
• False positives down to 6-8%
• 99.96% platform availability
Eurobank Group is a Greek banking group, based in Athens, Greece, with an international presence in Cyprus, Luxembourg, UK, and Bulgaria. It has 540 branches, around 10,500 employees, and total assets of $79.8bn. It is the 3rd largest bank in Greece and also in Cyprus, measured by assets, deposits, and loans. Its main strategic pillars are wealth asset management, international business banking, corporate investment banking, and bespoke banking for high-net worth individuals. These pillars vary from country to country.
Dual challenges, one solution
Chief among the bank’s challenges are regulation and digital innovation. On the former, an ever-changing, more demanding regulatory climate needs to be monitored and complied with. On the latter, the aim is to improve the customer experience by creating more self-service products and features, at a time when fintechs and neobanks are redefining customer-centric banking.
For Spyros Loizou, Group Head of International IT at Eurobank Cyprus, these are complimentary challenges. “Customers don’t just want convenience. They also need to feel that their funds, their investments, and their money, are safe and secure. So digital modernization is not just about how we create more convenient banking experiences, but also how we maintain responsible standards.”
Underpinning these dual challenges is technology, which the bank sees as both an enabler of innovation and a means to deliver its ESG commitments, explains Spyros. “Whatever we design and implement in the future has to be ESG compliant; but also, within the ESG spirit, meaning you design a process that has to be simple, and not burden the environment. That could mean going paperless with processes or minimizing the footprint of our IT operations. So we really approach ESG from a technology perspective.”
Time to change
Faced with these ambitions, Eurobank in Cyprus decided to evaluate its IT landscape. A closed architecture meant the bank relied heavily on the vendor to manage configurations and integrations, hampering innovation. This was compounded by the news that the vendor had stopped future investments in the product. “We were running legacy applications and systems that didn’t match the aspirations of the business. It wasn’t scalable, agile, flexible, or futureproof.”
That prompted the bank to search for a new core banking solution. From the outset, scale was an important selection criteria.
We wanted a technology partner with global reach, and market maturity, so we could leverage all the knowledge and best practice lessons from implementations that have been completed around the world. This is what led us to Temenos.”
Spyros Loizou, Group Head of International IT at Eurobank Cyprus
End-to-end advantage
Regulatory know-how was considered a key benefit of this scale. So too the breadth of the Temenos platform. “It has allowed us to continually enable new banking capabilities, without the complexities and costs from working with too many vendors.”
Eurobank Cyprus has made the most of this end-to-end platform, implementing core, digital, wealth management, Temenos Payments Hub (TPH), Financial Crime and Mitigation (FCM), trade finance, and analytics. The impact has been impressive, says Spyros. “Take TPH, for example. It has allowed us to simplify a previously complex operation of handling payments from different client types, whilst maintaining the flexibility to satisfy all the different nuances of each business line.”
Spyros also calls out the wealth management solution, from which the bank has launched a new digital offering.
We can now offer a full digital spectrum of order execution, and discretionary asset management advisory services, completely through the platform, with compliance checks built-in. Transactions that were previously being done manually, or semi-manually, are now automated and can be performed by our clients and relationship managers. That has created a strong competitive advantage for the bank.”
Spyros Loizou, Group Head of International IT at Eurobank Cyprus
This new digital wealth management service illustrates the speed with which Eurobank Cyprus can develop and launch new products. It has applied this capability across its portfolio, including investments, deposits, and lending products. “We can really go as fast as we want in a matter of days, we can launch a new product to the market, and be able to share with all our customer bases. That’s more than twice as fast as before.”
Big bang
Eurobank Cyprus has been live with the Temenos platform in its Cyprus business since April 2023; and for a “big bang implementation,” Spyros says it has been a smooth transition. “All the modules were new for all employees, but we’ve found them easy to learn and use. That empowers our people to create new products and proactively find new ways to do things more efficiently.”
The scope of the implementation – covering 85% of the bank’s IT in its Cyprus operation – felt like “waking up the next day with a brand new bank,” says Spyros. It was made more complex by starting three months prior to Covid and the workplace restrictions that ensued, which continued for 80% of the project.
Partnered by Temenos Implementation Services, the project involved not only migrating data from the old systems but also adapting the back-end procedures and operations so that they were aligned. This was a crucial aspect, recalls Spyros.
Today, our competitive advantage really comes from having a digital front end unified with a new state of the art infrastructure and working practices.”
Spyros Loizou, Group Head of International IT at Eurobank Cyprus
The big lesson he takes away from the implementation is the need for discipline, which points to having the right partner. “You need a lot of good governance. With a large-scale migration such as we did, it can be easy for the scope to creep even broader. It’s very important to stick to the plan, and only then allow yourself the appetite to add incrementally.”
First year returns
Just over a year after go-live, Eurobank Cyprus has already seen significant returns on its investment in Temenos. In payments it has been able to introduce STP (straight through processing), and now nine out of ten payments are fully automated, including compliance checks. Today it processes approximately 120,000 monthly payments in and out, across its product range, with the majority in their corporate, commercial, and international sectors. There has been good news too on false positives, which has come down to 6-8% as a result of the FCM module.
Spyros adds that it is also now much easier for the bank to implement new payment methods (e.g. SEPA and SWIFT) and configure these differently for its separate business lines and customer profiles, such as adjusting pricing rules and fee structures. “In combination with FCM, we can pretty much do whatever we want in order to balance operational efficiency, while ensuring compliance.”
Wealth management is another area where the bank has seen efficiencies. Prior to Temenos, every aspect – from order capture through to execution and settlement – was manual or semi-manual. STP has also been applied here, “which allows us to focus more on what really matters for the customer, such as providing good advice and investing in the manager relationship.”
Digital banking is a third area of improvement that Spyros calls out.
We have introduced new functionality in card management for individual and business customers, such as self-servicing. So now, our customers can activate a new card, block or unblock, and access various certificates of balance and interest, all online. Previously, all those tasks were manual.”
Spyros Loizou, Group Head of International IT at Eurobank Cyprus
Eurobank Cyprus has also taken advantage of the trade finance module from Temenos. “It marries really well with our corporate business because a lot of our clients that are trading across the globe need to guarantee their shipments with letters of credit.” Again, automation has been a big benefit and applied to tasks such as calculating commissions, and managing messages across the SWIFT network. “It is another example of how we have taken fully manual processes and achieved significant efficiencies with automation.”
An ambitious future
Going forward, the bank’s priority is to grow its retail business. “With the Temenos platform, we have the capabilities we need to achieve this.” As well as scalability, composability of services, and automation, it includes availability. Since going live, the bank has seen 99.96% availability from the platform, which is even more impressive when you consider the ‘big bang’ approach it took. This robustness is complemented by a support team from Temenos that “are knowledgeable, proactive, and solve issues fast”, says Spyros.
And compliance automations make the bank better placed to manage the rollout of a new raft of upcoming international regulations and standards, such as the introduction of the Swift MX ISO format in 2025.
With the successful implementation in its Cyprus business serving as a blueprint, Eurobank Cyprus has since enabled Temenos Wealth in Greece, and is now implementing it in Luxembourg.
Having Temenos as one of our most important strategic partners means we can plan ambitiously for the future. We will keep investing in the platform, because we know that it is the way to unlock more efficiencies and be even more competitive in all our markets.”
Spyros Loizou, Group Head of International IT at Eurobank Cyprus
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
At a Glance
• Big bang go-live of Temenos core, payments hub and wealth management on the same day for retail, corporate and private business lines
• Close of business reporting reduced to 3-4hrs from day-one
• Faster time to onboard volume-based customers
• Divide the number of client pricing conditions by up to 6
BIL (Banque Internationale à Luxembourg) is the oldest bank in Luxembourg, and the second largest in the country, with more than 200,000 customers. It offers retail, private, corporate and institutional banking as well as financial market services. As a sign of its importance, half of the country’s financial institutions use BIL’s infrastructure to process payments, totalling 25m per year (or a daily average of 200k). BIL also has dedicated wealth management offices in Switzerland and China. It has assets under management of EUR 43.8 billion, employs more than 2,000 people.
In 2020 it began a five-year strategic plan, with the stated aim to modernize its core banking system and simplify its operations in order to develop new and improved services for its clients.
Turning challenges into opportunities
That plan is also designed to make the bank more adaptable to changing regulations and banking standards, both at a national and international level. For the spokesperson at the bank, these dynamics are both an opportunity and a challenge. “Sometimes it consumes a lot of our investment capacity, limiting our resources to innovate for our clients. However, the requirements of the regulator and the changes to our infrastructure pushes us to improve data quality, transparency and speed of payments.”
This nuanced view can also be seen in the spokesperson at the bank’s assessment of fintechs and other market entrants, where competition is needed and opportunities can be explored to partner.
Reframing innovation
For BIL, the ultimate aim is innovation; what is the best route to developing new services and bringing them to market? Though the answer to that question changes over the years, history tells you that the bank regularly gets it right. BIL was one of the first banks in Luxembourg to propose a web-banking solution, to use AI to support credit decisions, to make strides in cross-border instant payments (in collaboration with Swift), and more recently has been at the cutting edge of developments in CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and open banking.
While this spirit of innovation remains at the heart of BIL, it is now complemented with a commitment to ESG. That has been partly driven by regulatory obligations, says the spokesperson at the bank, but also the belief that ESG principles are a route to improving every aspect of the bank. As such, ESG is seen not simply in terms of carbon footprint measures and progress in diversity, but “as a whole bank framework that informs how we are organised, how we develop products, and how we interact and help our clients.” It extends to supporting customers with their own ESG journey. “We have clients in various industries who need to go through a major transition.”
Seeking scalability
BIL recognized that its ability to innovate had become compromised by outdated technology. the spokesperson at the bank recalls: “We had a 30-plus-year-old legacy system that we’d built layer after layer, year after year. It had become like a plate of spaghetti.” Amongst the issues that created was scalability. “I’ve had to refuse some services to clients because we could not onboard the volumes they were bringing.” Increasing operational costs and a shortage of qualified managers (“Who knows about mainframe technologies anymore!”) added to the case to modernize.
The bank considered a number of approaches. Replatforming was dismissed as being unceasing, and a best-of-breed build as being too costly and complex. Instead, BIL decided to invest in a new core banking platform, and turned to Gartner’s and Forrester’s rankings to draw up its shortlist. And from there, it selected Temenos.
We took the Temenos core for a few reasons. Its functional coverage was impressive, and the ability to easily switch on and configure new modules. That flexibility delivers scalability, which is super important when you’re operating in a fast evolving market.”
Spokesperson at the bank
He also points to the technical superiority of the platform, and the relationship that had been cultivated with the Temenos team through the procurement process. “We had a great synergy with their people.”
Confidence and trust
BIL took the brave decision to go for a ‘big bang’ deployment. “On the same day we replaced our legacy technology with Temenos core, Temenos Payments Hub (TPH) and Temenos Wealth Front Office, for our retail, corporate and private business lines! You only get to do that if you are totally confident in the new technology.”
The implementation program was completed in October 2023. It involved Deloitte and LTIMindtree and included user testing, business operability and readiness tests, took around 20 months. “Temenos was also a great support throughout”, says the spokesperson at the bank, recalling how some of the software development team in India even relocated to BIL’s offices for up to six months to work on the project. “Their dedication was incredible. They were a big reason why we went live successfully.”
Breaking new ground
A spokesperson at the bank points to performance as one area where the bank has seen an immediate impact.
From the very first day after go-live, we have had a constant, three-hour cycle for the close of business. And what has been really impressive is that every month on the 5th day, when we charge the monthly account management fees to our clients, close of business reporting is faster, even though the system is working harder.”
Spokesperson at the bank
The bank now has the scalability to onboard high-volume clients that it had previously turned away, and to extend its payments solutions. It also has the flexibility to segment pricing for different clients. “We have been able to divide by three or four the number of pricing conditions for our clients; for wealth management we have divided by three, and for retail and corporate by five or six. The structure of the pricing system modules allows us to work in a matrix to rationalize our approach. The complexity for our finance teams to deal with this segmentation has improved.”
Scale that improvement across the 200,000 payments that the bank processes on average every day, and the efficiencies become amplified.
BIL is also excited about how the new platform can help it break new ground in the alternative investment sector. “The fund industry in Luxembourg is very developed, and our institutional clients are increasingly creative. We now have the means to support them in building more diversified portfolios.”
Everything we need
It all points to the higher potential for growth.
Ultimately, Temenos is helping us to be more customer-centric; that means creating products that are relevant to our clients and providing a better experience consistently. Now we have everything we need to grow our volumes.”
Spokesperson at the bank
TPH will also be crucial to the bank developing new instant payment (sending and receiving) solutions, which regulators have set ambitious implementation timings for. “We know that TPH can do that.”
A spokesperson at the bank predicts that mutualization will become an increasing revenue stream for the bank.
Temenos core makes it far easier for us to co-create with financial partners. We are moving from a bank that only sells products to clients to a bank that also sells infrastructure to partners. Take payments; we already support half the banking industry in Luxembourg to process their payments. Now we have the means to develop more of these sorts of opportunities.”
Spokesperson at the bank
It points to a long-term partnership. “It’s like a marriage”, says the spokesperson at the bank. “We’re creating a relationship for the next 20-25 years at least. And all the great moments are still ahead of us.”
We partnered successfully with
One-Stop Pure-Play Global Partner for all Temenos Solutions, System Integrations and Digital Services
Deloitte is an eminent leader in digital business transformation, blending global reach with strong local expertise and the Temenos Centre of Excellence in Luxembourg and Poland.
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
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
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Swiss Private Bank, Mirabaud, will be launching the largest project the bank has ever embarked on. Starting in the Spring of 2022, Temenos will be supporting Mirabaud to move from a traditional on-premise system to a digital end-to-end wealth management platform on Temenos Banking Cloud. In a market that is becoming increasingly competitive with the entry of neo-banks and fintech, Mirabaud intends to fully restructure its technology stack to adapt quickly to the demands of new clients. With the generational transfer of wealth, new regulations, and growth in asset classes such as private equity and digital assets, Temenos Banking Cloud gives Mirabaud the agility to quickly adapt to changing investment opportunities and client expectations. The move to cloud solutions will help Mirabaud prepare for the future. It is a foundational element of the current ongoing transformation.
Wealth is currently the trend for the younger generation due to inheritance and entrepreneurship. Customers are becoming more socially and environmentally concerned. Customers are also interested in new products and services, such as private equity, and cryptocurrency. For traditional banks like Mirabaud, staying relevant is a must. They aim to build hyper-personal, highly informed, and transparent digital customer experiences. Temenos demonstrated its advanced technology architecture to deliver the utmost secure cloud-native platform.
The global solution based on the Temenos SaaS model will actually help us grow while maintaining an efficient operating model. With this new digital ecosystem, we will have the client experience tools to help us prepare personalised advice and encounters with increased efficiency, allowing us to further spend quality dialogue time with our clients. We will be able to adapt more quickly to their needs, cater for future market trends, and remain committed to our core value of delivering a passionate, personalised, human service.”
Camille Vial, CEO at Mirabaud
Mirabaud will adopt the complete suite of Temenos wealth banking capabilities, from self-service channels and portfolio management to back-office processing, including Payments, Financial Crime Mitigation and Data Lake that will enable Mirabaud to deliver a digital customer experience with personalized services and highly automated processes. Mirabaud will benefit from the global solution based on the Temenos SaaS model, which will allow the bank to grow while maintaining an efficient operating model. Adopting the latest SaaS technology, Mirabaud will be able to adapt more quickly to its customer’s needs with increased efficiency, cater to future market trends, and remain committed to its core value of delivering passionate, personalized, human service.
This key investment for the Mirabaud Group is a clear demonstration of our dedication to our clients, positioning ourselves as a leading partner for them today and the generations to come. We are working to carry on adapting quickly to their needs and market trends while never losing sight of our core vision and values to combine our entrepreneurial and passionate human approach with cutting edge technology.”
Camille Vial, CEO at Mirabaud
Exclusive: Wealth Management 2.0 – The Big Opportunity That Only Technology Can Deliver
Camille Vial, CEO of Mirabaud, the Swiss private bank, and Max Chuard, Former CEO of Temenos, recently had a conversation about where they see tech trends going in the wealth management industry.
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
At a Glance
● 9 months to develop and launch a new mobile banking app, later reduced to just 4 months for subsequent apps.
● Over 550,000 customers now actively use the bank’s apps
● Contributes to 30% annual growth in mobile app usage
● 95% of total transactions run on digital channels
● 57% of digital banking is on mobile only, resulting in 33% increase of transactions
One of the ten largest banks in Italy, Credito Emiliano SpA (Credem) has been helping customers to manage their finances for more than 110 years. Headquartered in Reggio Emilia and listed on the Borsa Italiana stock exchange, the bank offers wealth management services alongside retail, business, and corporate banking. With 1.5 million customers, Credem reported total assets under management of EUR 65 billion.
Digital services are a strategic priority for Italian banks, especially since the pandemic has limited access to physical branches. As the battle for market share intensifies, they strive to differentiate themselves from the competition with online and mobile services that place simple, secure, and intuitive financial tools at users’ fingertips.
Fabio Caliceti, Head of Digital Channels, Credem, explains: “We are evolving our business model, pushing very strongly towards a full omnichannel service, with an optimal mix between human and digital to meet the highest and most demanding client needs. To build long-lasting relationships with customers, with regard to digital channels, we aim to make every digital touchpoint and digital contact as frictionless and easy to navigate as possible.”
Fostering a culture of established digital innovation
In 2019, Credem committed to innovation by working on various initiatives. These included setting up a stronger connection with the fintechs and introducing new leading-edge technologies such as automation, artificial intelligence, and chatbots to enhance the bank’s services.
This emphasis on innovation has sparked strong growth across Credem’s digital channels, but the bank saw opportunities to improve its mobile banking app. With its previous development platform, Credem found adding new features and performing maintenance a time-consuming and labor-intensive process.
Andrea Ferrari, Head of Touchpoints, IT Department, Credem, adds, “There was a risk of our mobile app becoming outdated and falling behind the competition. Our platform vendor offered no real technology roadmap, with limited investment in new functionality. We had significant growth in app usage, but we need to make ongoing improvements to maintain that momentum.”
Innovation takes many forms, and a relatively new focus for Credem is on extending ESG-related services beyond traditional enterprise customers to retail.
Andrea Ferrari clarifies, “We are launching a new project to understand what we could do as a bank on the ESG side, in line also with new European regulations, to help our customers better understand their environmental impact. And being able to share our ESG focus and goals with Temenos who is committed on sustainable business practices for a while, is certainly an advantage for us.”
Selecting a low-code development platform
Credem planned a new mobile app for retail banking, private banking, and small and medium-sized business customers called “Digital Banking” with a fresh design and a rich array of tools to empower users to manage their accounts. It was subsequently decided to build dedicated apps for each audience. To build the two new apps, Credem assembled a team of developers, business analysts, and Product Owners, and decided to use Temenos digital banking on Temenos SaaS with infrastructure running of AWS.
Temenos offered a very useful low-code platform that would allow our teams to develop the new mobile apps in JavaScript and bring new front-end features to market rapidly. Cloud and CI/CD are two pillars of our IT strategy, so we also wanted a partner with proven service delivery capabilities, letting us the opportunity to stay focused on new functionalities. The Temenos team demonstrated considerable experience using CI/CD methodologies to test, develop, and deploy new banking apps.”
– Andrea Ferrari, Head of Touchpoints, IT Department at Credem
He adds, “The Temenos SaaS ensures that we avoid the hassle and costs of managing infrastructure, which has formed a key part of our IT strategy for many years. The cloud model also gives us elastic scalability, allowing us to provision resources at the click of a button during testing and development.”
Developing and launching quickly—despite the pandemic
Credem started the implementation just as the pandemic struck, with lockdowns sweeping across Italy. To keep work moving forward, the project team moved to a remote deployment and development strategy, based on an agile framework. Working together, Credem and Temenos completed the discovery phases, created and tested the alpha version of the new app, and launched the full version on the market in just nine months.
Completing such a complex project fully remotely wasn’t easy at all, but Temenos helped to minimize disruption, bringing wide-ranging skills and competencies to the table, this, added to a strong commitment from Credem people has achieved the goal of completing the development and launching the new app in nine months; a really excellent result.”
– Andrea Ferrari, Head of Touchpoints, IT Department at Credem
During the development process, Credem made full use of Temenos Country Model Bank functionality, which provides prebuilt workflows, such as payments and money transfers, that, after some evolutions defined during the project, are now fully compliant with local Italian financial regulations, helping to reduce project complexity and accelerate time-to-market.
The omnichannel low-code Temenos platform was pivotal to success, as Andrea Ferrari confirms, “With the Temenos solution, we were able to use the same code for both the iOS and Android versions of the app. We could work as a single, unified team throughout, focusing all our strengths on a single technology and not splitting on different mobile operating systems. Our users found the Temenos platform easier than other technologies, we have invested time in skilling our people, and in a short time we have been proficient with the tools.”
Leveraging on the know-how to deploy new apps
Following the successful launch in January 2021, Credem gradually rolled out the new apps to approximately 450,000 individual and SME customers.
In early 2023, Credem built on the success of these apps with the release of two new mobile apps for the needs of private banking customers from Credem Euromobiliare Private Banking, which is part of the Credito Emiliano group, one for individuals and another for businesses.
And they were built much faster this time round. As Andrea Ferrari explains, “These two new apps were built in four months each as we leveraged the paradigm of the previous apps and the experience of the team involved. It was quick and easy to adapt the current apps to create the new ones.”
Furthermore, it is easier to deploy new features and enhancements. In 2023 alone, Credem launched 11 version updates. It’s a record, as Andrea Ferrari highlights, “We are delighted with the Temenos digital platform, which allowed us to deploy 11 releases in nine months. It is exceptional and it’s indeed more than five times the number of releases per year we had prior to working with Temenos”. The number of releases further increased in 2024 to an impressive 12 version updates for the main retail application and another 16 for the Private Banking and SME applications.
Delivering a superior in-app experience
The apps features a simplified, frictionless design and interface that makes it easy for users to navigate the various menus and features, while multi-factor authentication, including biometrics options, ensures the highest levels of security. Credem has also embedded the mobile token used for authentication and transactions in a smoother fashion.
Within the apps, Credem customers can activate and manage cards, view transaction records, make and schedule transfers, top up prepaid payment cards, and as well as manage bill and tax payments.
Recently, Credem just launched its first 100% digital-only savings account and has signed 15,000 brand-new customers already. They can now apply for new debit and credit cards via their app, rather than having to go into a branch.
Andrea Ferrari explains why this new offer is a gamechanger, “It’s enriching our customer proposition. We are offering something remote for people who don’t want to come into a branch and who prefer to stay at home.”
Andrea Ferrari adds, “With Temenos, we can make enhancements to our mobile app that were more complex with our older platform, ensuring that we continue to improve the user experience. The solutions enable us to develop and bring new services to market rapidly; we have already introduced smart credit card management and payments options, and added account aggregation.” And users are responding positively to these enhancements. The new apps now average four stars in Apple’s and Google’s app stores, up from three stars.
Moving forward, Credem also intends to harness third-party integration tools leveraging the partner ecosystem Temenos Exchange, to further enhance its mobile banking services, as Andrea Ferrari explains, “With Temenos Exchange, we can connect seamlessly to leading-edge fintech solutions, avoiding the complexity of in-house development. Temenos gives us all the tools that we need to cement our status as a leading innovator among Italian banks.”
Attracting more and more app users
Working with Temenos to develop these apps has helped Credem to attract new users for its mobile banking services. In recent years, the bank has achieved consistent 30 percent annual growth in app usage and downloads, with over 100 million transactions across all its digital channels.
Today, Credem’s apps are used by over 550,000 active customers, while 95% of total transactions now run on digital channels (Mobile, Online Banking, etc.), keeping the mobile application at the core of digital evolution process. Indeed 57% of customers accessing the bank’s digital services are doing so, solely through one of Credem’s apps.
In the first 12 months the bank has seen a 41% increase in app downloads, a 39% increase in logins, and a 17% rise in app active users. This rate of adoption has resulted in a 33% increase in the number of transactions and payments performed via mobile. Fabio Caliceti adds, “Temenos has been an important pillar in the ongoing growth of our mobile app. Along with the dedication of our development teams and our strong focus on innovation, the Temenos solutions have helped us to accelerate our digital transformation and evolution towards omnichannel service delivery.”
Credem has redesigned its online banking channels using Temenos, building streamlined journeys for every stage of the customer lifecycle, from onboarding and origination onward. The new web-based digital banking experience and instant payments are the new projects that are in implementation. Credem values the partnership with Temenos and the ability to have workshops between both teams to align roadmaps.
Temenos is a great partner to Credem, always sharing useful information and looking to assist us in new ways. With Temenos, we are building innovative digital banking services that will help to strengthen our ties with our customers and differentiate ourselves in a competitive market. We are confident that we are looking at a brighter future, and Temenos will be a key part of this.”
– Andrea Ferrari, Head of Touchpoints, IT Department at Credem
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.
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
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.
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
At a Glance
- 2.5 million customers and 6.9 million accounts successfully migrated
- Managed 2 releases a month
- Shorter time-to-market to launch new products
Named again among America’s Best Banks by Forbes, Commerce Bank, top 50 US Bank, has been serving customers for over 150 years. With a long-term view and a focus on the customer, Commerce operates utilizes the “super community bank” model, which requires bringing together sophisticated banking products with high-touch, high-tech delivery to create and build deep relationships.
It means that Commerce Bank attempts to combine the back end of a large regional bank offering the products and services that you would expect with the front end of a community bank or a smaller bank with deep personal relationships, excellent customer service, bankers that are empowered to solve problems.
Like every bank, Commerce Bank was facing both external and internal challenges. Externally, it’s the explosion of digital solutions, and particularly the competition from fintechs, especially in the US facing shifting customer expectations. Internally, Commerce Bank is struggling with what is usually referred to as technical debt- managing those 30-plus-year-old systems and making the system do modern things.
Commerce Bank sought the next long-term strategic partner and a platform that shares the same vision of the future and had a common culture. The bank was seeking for a modern, integrated, extensible, highly configurable platform. And finally, the Commerce bank was considering cloud options in the long term and the economics and the flexibility would really help them drive value.
Commerce is focused on staying at the forefront of technology to ensure the best service to our customers. We recognize that a modern core banking platform is an accelerator for innovation and digital customer experiences. The Temenos platform will enable Commerce to deliver innovative solutions for our customers today and well into the future.”
David Roller, Chief Information Officer at Commerce Bank
Commerce chose Temenos as its strategic technology partner for its highly flexible, agile banking platform. Temenos’ modern platform increases operational efficiency and enhances Commerce’s ability to innovate and incorporate emerging technologies. The Temenos U.S. model bank approach helps Commerce to meet the unique business and regulatory needs of the market in an efficient and cost-effective way. This milestone completes its modernization project to move from its legacy systems for deposits to a modern, agile and open platform tailored for the US market.
In the quarter following the implementation, customer satisfaction and customer retention scores were either maintained or improved across all Commerce’s business segments. The great collaboration of Commerce and Temenos teams has enabled the migration of 2.5 million customers and 6.9 million accounts – spread across over 360 different product types. The bank was also able to do two releases a month and is working towards doing more. With Temenos open platform for composable banking Commerce is delighted to be able to grow and scale and shorten the time to market for new products. The super community model is a long-term strategy for Commerce coupled with big picture macro trends around digital, analytics, and automation on modern cloud architectures.
To deliver differentiated digital solutions to their customers, Commerce developed an enterprise digital strategy across their consumer wealth and commercial businesses. To connect customers to bankers Commerce launched during the pandemic, Commerce Bank Connect, based on the Temenos engage platform. It is a customized solution that allows customers to connect with a banker of their choice right from their smartphone.
Commerce helps high-net-worth individuals simplify their complex financial lives and by the end of 2022, Commerce will launch a Temenos-based private banking lending solution to keep ahead of the competition. Lastly, Commerce is modernizing its payments framework based on the Temenos payments engine, they aim to be an early adopter of the Instant Payment product introduced next year by the Federal Reserve Bank.
“Temenos has, as we’ve discovered the right technology, but also the US model bank has the regulatory support for us. We spent a lot of time with you working on it, and we believe it’s ready. But I’d also say that you have the people to deliver. So yes, we would recommend it.”
David Roller, Chief Information Officer at Commerce Bank
ABN AMRO
Unifying around a single platform to enable innovation and growth
Amsterdam, Netherlands
At a Glance
• Decrease onboarding times for financial advisors and investors to just 30 minutes
• Contributes to 100% growth in new accounts since the implementation
• Implemented the solution on the Temenos banking cloud in just 9 months
• Enables HUB24 to process growing application volumes seamlessly and more efficiently
HUB24 Limited is a company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. The company consists of the award-winning HUB24 platform, HUBconnect business and Xplore platform. HUB24 offers advisors and their clients a comprehensive range of investment options, including market-leading managed portfolio solutions and enhanced transaction and reporting functionality. As one of the fastest-growing platforms in the market, the platform is recognized for providing choice and innovative product solutions that create value for advisors and their clients.
As of September 2021, the HUB24 group has over AUD $45 billion in funds under administration on their platforms. Inevitably, rapid growth creates challenges. As well as servicing higher volumes of applications from financial advisors, HUB24 must ensure resources are available for innovation, sales activities, and ensuring compliance with the increasingly complex regulations that govern the Australian financial sector. To cover these bases and maintain momentum, HUB24 is focused on operating as efficiently as possible.
James Tesoriero, Product Development Manager – Platform and Managed Accounts at HUB24, explains: “We are growing at a fast pace and to continue our success, we aim to enhance our user experience and range of investment options while maintaining a low cost-to-income ratio.”
Planning fast, frictionless onboarding
At the start of every customer journey, financial advisors using the HUB24 platform capture complex data, which depends on the entity type being onboarded. This can include personal and company details, financial information, and investment preferences, as well as completing a series of verification steps in support of know-your-customer (KYC) activities and identification of beneficial owners. Previously, HUB24 relied on systems developed in-house to support customer onboarding — but the business was looking to make improvements.
We are always looking for ways to enhance the customer experience and were keen to upgrade our previous system. We wanted to make it as easy and efficient as possible for both advisors and our own teams – to reduce the time taken to complete tasks and move applications forward more efficiently.”
James Tesoriero, Product Development Manager – Platform and Managed Accounts at HUB24
Along with enabling financial advisors and investors to complete applications efficiently, HUB24 wanted to ensure advisors and their teams spent less time on follow-up and had an improved customer experience overall. HUB24 realized that a simpler, frictionless onboarding process was essential and that collaborating with an experienced provider would provide customers with the best outcome, while also supporting business growth.
Deploying a best-in-class solution in the cloud
Rather than re-engineering the in-house system, HUB24 looked to work with a partner with proven experience helping financial advisors to optimize onboarding. Essentially, HUB24 wanted a best-in-class solution with capabilities to build customized application journeys for different client groups. After assessing the available options, HUB24 chose Temenos Journey Manager running on the Temenos banking cloud.
Temenos was very supportive from the start, offering real expertise in onboarding and strong knowledge of the Australian financial sector. The flexibility and simple user interface of the solution were impressive, along with the analytics tools that would help us continually enhance our customer experience. Adopting the cloud model was an easy choice, removing all worries about managing infrastructure.”
James Tesoriero, Product Development Manager – Platform and Managed Accounts at HUB24
Working with Temenos, HUB24 implemented the solution in just nine months. As the COVID-19 pandemic struck early in the process, Temenos and HUB24 switched to a remote deployment model, building prototypes and completing multiple phases of user testing to fine-tune the new onboarding journey before going live.
Adding innovative, user-friendly features
Using Temenos Journey Manager, HUB24 added more intuitive elements to the onboarding journey for many of its investment options. For example, application forms now include fields tailored for different client groups, whether individuals, self-managed super funds, or corporate trusts, while electronic signature tools simplify the final submission steps. To pinpoint sources of friction, HUB24 harnesses the analytics capabilities of the Temenos solution to monitor how financial advisors and investors interact with the new forms.
James Tesoriero adds: “Using Temenos Journey Manager to change text fields on forms and to rearrange elements on the digital interface is very straightforward. We have built up considerable internal knowledge about the solution, and whenever we need extra assistance Temenos provides responsive support, including documentation and access to solution architects.”
Accelerating the application journey
The enhanced onboarding process enables financial advisors and investors to complete onboarding much faster than before. Industry surveys now rate HUB24 as Australia’s Best Platform[1].
With Temenos Journey Manager, we have created a much simpler, more intuitive and frictionless onboarding journey that clients complete on average in just 30 minutes, a massive improvement on our previous system.”
James Tesoriero, Product Development Manager – Platform and Managed Accounts at HUB24
The Temenos solution has also helped HUB24 to improve operational efficiency. As the new onboarding forms capture all relevant client information, internal teams no longer have to chase financial advisors for missing details. Instead, HUB24 can divert its resources to other tasks, such as developing next-generation investment platform features and managing regulatory compliance changes that will provide additional value and support for our customers.
James Tesoriero adds: “Streamlined onboarding helps us to become more efficient and meet the increasing demand from financial advisors and investors. With the Temenos solution, we can process rising application volumes quickly and seamlessly, while also providing advisors with an improved customer experience.”
Forging an effective partnership
In future, HUB24 plans to use Temenos Journey Manager to create frictionless onboarding journeys for new services, as James Tesoriero explains: “With the Temenos solution, we can reuse the tried-and-tested elements that we know work well to create new customer journeys, helping to accelerate the development and launch process and ensure a first-class customer experience from the start.”
Working with Temenos has been excellent. Our dedicated account managers always listen carefully to our feedback and challenge themselves to deliver even greater value. Our partnership with Temenos has been an important part of our success in recent years, and we will certainly look to collaborate further as we continue to grow in the years ahead.”
James Tesoriero, Product Development Manager – Platform and Managed Accounts at HUB24
[1] HUB24 secured the top ranking in the Investment Trends 2020 Competitive Platform Analysis and Benchmarking Report, which ranked 15 major investment platforms according to functionality and adviser preferences.