Executive Foreword
For banks, operating under pressure is nothing new. High running costs, tight margins and regulatory complexity have long shaped the industry. In this environment, technology has often been viewed as a cost center rather than a value driver.
What has changed is the pace of innovation, and the consequences of falling behind.
Banks are recognizing that technology is central to their ability to build trust, compete and grow. Those treating technology as a strategic asset are pulling ahead, those that don’t are finding it increasingly difficult to keep pace.
This report examines the forces shaping banking across Retail, Corporate, Wealth and Payments. Banks are navigating heightened regulatory scrutiny, escalating cyber threats, rising customer expectations and intensifying competition. At the same time, meaningful growth opportunities exist across verticals, but only for banks who can use data efficiently, create real-time insights, and leverage the transformational potential of generative and agentic AI.
Many banks are attempting to respond to these challenges and opportunities with platforms that were never designed for them. Legacy cores struggle to support modern security standards and real-time decision making. Nearly a third (28%) of legacy banking applications are undocumented, creating hidden operational risk and uncertainty.[1] Data duplication is widespread, and batch processing remains common, significantly limiting the effectiveness of analytics and AI.
In practical terms, legacy environments make agility slow, change expensive, and innovation harder to deliver.
A different approach is now taking hold. Cloud-native, composable core platforms provide the resilience, scalability and system integration required to build trust, progressively modernize and support sustainable growth. They allow targeted investments in AI and automation that deliver measurable value, including lower cost-to-serve, faster time-to-market, improved operational efficiency, and more relevant customer experiences.
Across banking segments, the pattern is consistent. Banks that embed intelligence into a modern core, rather than layering it onto legacy, are better positioned. In the market, they’re increasing share of wallet, improving cross‑sell, and using real-time, AI-driven capabilities to grow in areas such as DeFi and payments. Within the bank, gen AI is already compressing tasks that once took months into minutes. Meanwhile, Agentic AI is beginning to reshape banking workflows, accelerating implementations and allowing employees to focus on high‑value work.
In collaboration with Bain & Company, this report brings together industry research, market insights and Temenos Value Benchmark data to give banking leaders an evidence-based view of the trends shaping their industry. It is designed to support practical, informed decision‑making, grounded in what has been shown to drive value.
The future of banking will be defined by institutions that treat technology not just as a cost to be managed, but as a driver of growth, resilience and differentiation. I hope the insights in this report help you move forward with clarity and confidence.
Will Moroney
Chief Revenue Officer
Explore other segments
Retail & Business Banking
Retail and business banks will accelerate hyper personalization, embed AI into journeys, and scale digital channels to drive growth, efficiency, and deeper customer relationships.
Corporate & Commercial Banking
Corporate banks will unify lending workflows, harness AI agents, and deliver real time insights to transform efficiency, decision making, and complex client servicing.
Wealth Management
Wealth firms will adopt hybrid advisory models, expand AI driven personalization, and modernize systems to deliver scalable, transparent, globally connected client experiences.
Payments
Payments providers will embrace real time rails, AI powered processing, and digital assets as volumes surge and regulated tokenized finance enters mainstream adoption.
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