Bank of Beirut UK is a specialist trade finance bank with a unique footprint. Based in London and regulated by the Bank of England, it plays a key role in connecting banking corridors between Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

“Our core business is correspondent banking and trade finance,” said Sophoklis Argyrou, CEO of Bank of Beirut UK. “We act as a gateway for regional banks wanting to finance exports into Africa and the Middle East. Today, we work with over 300 banks across these corridors.”

While this wholesale network remains central, the bank also serves a specific and growing segment: the Lebanese diaspora – typically high-net-worth individuals in West Africa, MENA, and Lebanon. Sophoklis sees this group as a cornerstone of future growth.

While the bank’s previous systems were functional, they lacked the capabilities to enable modernization at scale. Enhancements were costly, operational visibility was limited, and compliance demands were growing.

“We felt the systems no longer gave us what we needed – from performance to security to reporting,” Sophoklis explained. “And as we looked to expand, we needed a platform that could support that ambition.”

The bank launched a full replacement of its core and payments infrastructure, with four main strategic goals:

• Scale their trade finance business to strengthen their corporate banking proposition
• Enable growth in retail and private banking
• Improve operational efficiency and regulatory readiness
• Ensure long-term stability and control

Although the Temenos platform was already being evaluated by the parent group, the UK entity conducted its own due diligence.

The bank was particularly drawn to Temenos’ focus on banking.

“They are a specialist financial services core provider,” he noted. “Unlike other tech firms covering multiple sectors, Temenos is purely focused on banking. And their client base matched our profile; institutions facing similar regulatory and operational complexity.”

The solution includes Temenos Core, Temenos Trade Finance, and Temenos Payments to meet UK regulatory and data residency requirements.

This was not a standard plug-and-play implementation. As a correspondent bank, Bank of Beirut UK handles complex payment flows using SWIFT MT100, MT200, and MT700 series messages – capabilities that require robust configuration.

The bank worked closely with LTIMindtree, Temenos’ preferred partner in the region.

“LTIMindtree delivered the project with professionalism and care. We had confidence in them from the start, and they validated that confidence throughout,” Sophoklis said.

“For this transformation, tight collaboration was essential,” said Hemal Jayasinghe, Chief Business Officer, at LTIMindtree. “Bank of Beirut UK, Temenos, and our delivery team worked as one from day one – aligning on priorities, managing the regulatory environment, and solving challenges together.”

The project went live in just over 12 months. And while formal ROI assessments are scheduled for the next phase, the immediate feedback has been clear – especially from frontline teams.

“The trade finance team told us straight away – it’s more capable, more efficient,” Sophoklis shared. “They can process faster and with more confidence.”

Operationally, the system has already unlocked key improvements:

• Dramatically expanded management information (MI) and reporting capabilities
• Significantly improved data visibility across operations

“The data visibility is miles ahead of what we had before,” Sophoklis said. “The MI potential is limitless.

Control and security have also improved, giving senior leadership greater confidence. “We feel more secure, knowing we’re operating on an up-to-date platform with proper controls,” added Sophoklis.

The transformation is about more than modernization – it’s about enabling a different kind of bank. While 80–85% of the business today remains wholesale-focused, the target is to reach a 60/40 split between wholesale and retail/private banking.

“We’re expanding our offering to the Lebanese diaspora – high-net-worth clients who want a secure, personalized service,” Sophoklis explained. “The new platform gives us the agility to grow without compromising our core.”

The goal is clear: grow the customer base threefold within three to five years, starting from mid-2026.

Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank) is one of Vietnam’s largest private banks, serving over 30 million customers across retail and corporate banking. The bank is a leader in digital innovation, having launched multiple digital brands including NEO, NEOBiz, UBank, Cake. To serve millions more customers with speed and reliability, VPBank recognized that its core banking platform had to evolve – to be faster, smarter, and more scalable.

VPBank had been using Temenos Core Banking since 2006. As it has grown, it has retained this core, while upgrading to new releases.

“We always need to improve our speed to market and agility,” said Augustine Wong Kok Seng, former CIO at VPBank. “Digital banks move fast, and if we want to stay competitive, we need to keep our core platform at the cutting edge.”

More importantly, many of the alternative platforms required specialized business analyst skills that were hard to source in emerging markets like Vietnam.

VPBank committed to upgrading its Temenos core banking, while shifting to a hybrid architecture using Red Hat OpenShift. The bank partnered with Systems Limited, with proven expertise in deploying Red Hat OpenShift for core banking on-premise. Red Hat was instrumental in helping containerise VPBank’s core banking system. While the core continues to run on-premise in a private cloud, AWS supported the broader hybrid architecture and testing environments, providing flexibility as the bank plans for future innovations.

This wasn’t a routine upgrade. It was one of the largest and most complex core banking transformations in the country. It involved migrating more than 18 million accounts and 77 terabytes of data, all within a 24-hour go-live window.

Key to success was VPBank’s decision to run the upgrade using disaster recovery (DR) mode to avoid impacting customer service. For most of the weekend, customers continued transacting as usual, with only a brief three-hour switchover window when systems were unavailable.

“With this modernisation, VPBank gains the ability to orchestrate workloads at scale, streamline deployments, and maintain high availability. These are critical capabilities for supporting millions of customers while driving continuous innovation,” said Dao Hoang Giang (Jane), Country Manager, Red Hat Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos & Myanmar.

The technology upgrade is about more than just scale. It’s also enabling inclusion.

Vietnam has a population of over 100 million, but only around 30 million are currently banked. VPBank is on a mission to change that. “Our full name – Vietnam Prosperity Bank – says it all,” Augustine said. “We’re here to build an inclusive financial society. That requires trust, and trust is built on stable, scalable systems.”

When FundBank continued its recent global expansion into the US and Luxembourg, to further serve the asset management industry, it had a rare advantage: no legacy systems and no outdated technology. The goal was simple but powerful: create a fully digital, cross-border bank that could serve clients with speed, security, and simplicity. With the full Temenos SaaS offering FundBank turned that vision into reality driving its expansion in the United States. This foundation positions the bank to serve significantly more clients without increasing operational complexity.

FundBank isn’t a traditional bank. It is a global bank focused on serving the asset management sector, including fund managers, administrators, brokers, and family offices who need seamless service across jurisdictions. These clients value efficiency and expect their banking to move as fast as their investments. Using Temenos, FundBank is expected to serve significantly more customers per employee as automation and straight-through processing increase across operations.

“FundBank was built for a niche market that demands more than just banking,” said Diarmuid O’Donovan, Global Chief Information Officer. “They want a digital experience that feels effortless, wherever they do business.”

Having operated in the Cayman Islands for many years, FundBank launched operations in the U.S in 2024 and began with a clean slate. There were no legacy systems to migrate or old data to reconcile, just the opportunity to design a modern, cloud-native bank from the ground up. The first major milestone came when the bank secured its U.S. banking license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). With regulatory approval in place, FundBank expanded to Luxembourg.

This scalability is expected to support rising transaction volumes and cross-sell activity as the bank expands into new markets.

To power its growth, FundBank adopted end-to-end banking on Temenos SaaS, deployed on Microsoft Azure. Temenos Core Banking is the foundation of the platform while Temenos Digital delivers an intuitive, frictionless online experience for corporate clients. Temenos Payments enables full centralization and real-time control over the processing of any type of payment from any channel or source, with cross-border and multi-currency payments flowing smoothly across multiple clearing systems, including ISO 20022. Financial Crime Mitigation ensures robust compliance, while Temenos Data Hub provides the insights and real-time analytics needed to drive smarter decisions. As adoption increases, FundBank expects cross-sell performance to rise exponentially, supported by deeper insights and more personalized client engagement.

From day one, FundBank set out to be fully digital. Every process, from onboarding to account management, happens online. Clients can open and manage accounts quickly and securely. While the U.S. and Luxembourg operations are entirely digital, the third phase in Cayman Islands will integrate shortly. Behind the scenes, Temenos’ open integration framework connects FundBank to critical third-party systems like Bloomberg and HID, giving the bank the flexibility to customize and extend services without building them from scratch. This digital-first approach is expected to revolutionize onboarding while improving overall customer satisfaction significantly.

FundBank worked closely with Temenos, leveraging their architecture alignment, support, and strategic guidance to ensure every component of the deployment worked seamlessly together. With proven success in countries like Luxembourg, Temenos offered both the technology and the track record FundBank needed, giving the bank confidence as it expanded its global footprint.

Founded in the 1970s as the Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (APICORP), the Arab Energy Fund is a specialist financial institution focused on midstream and downstream energy investments. Its business activities span direct equity investments, trade finance, and structured loans, including syndicated and bilateral arrangements where it often acts as facility or syndication agent. It supports over 130 active facilities with a combined balance sheet exceeding USD 5.88 billion.

In 2024 it marked its 50th anniversary with an expanded mandate that includes sustainability and ESG-driven financing. That vision came with complexity, and need for further enhancements of the system with new and more innovative modules.

With greater operational efficiency, the Fund has increased its capacity to serve as agent on more complex deals. And because each facility can be configured individually, the platform supports the Fund’s ambitions to lead higher-value, structured transactions in the region.

Additionally, the AA architecture has enabled product-level configuration and categorization, streamlining how data is captured and improving what’s possible in reporting and analysis

“When your products are designed the way your business operates, reporting becomes a by-product,” Mohammad said. “Now we get the data we need, in the format we need it. And we feed these back into the business, so we have a continually loop of insights and improvements.”

Going greener

Technology is also helping the Fund deliver on its ESG commitments. Since 2020, it has launched green bonds and invested in sustainable energy projects. Its new Temenos modules allow for these ESG-linked products to be structured with the specific parameters needed for compliance and performance tracking.

● Successful self-delivered modernization of Temenos Core to R24.
● Transition to Temenos Application Framework Java (TAFJ) in parallel.
● ‘Close of Business’ (COB) processing time reduced from over 3.5 hours to under 2.
● 1.5 staff hours saved daily through automated member alerts.
● Faster third-party integration via regional APIs.

Integris Credit Union, with $1.5 billion in funds under administration, is located in northern British Columbia and has continually achieved results that rival much larger institutions. As a long-standing Temenos client Integris reaffirmed its digital-first vision in 2024 by executing one of its most ambitious initiatives to date: modernizing to the latest Temenos Core version, transitioning from TAFC (Temenos Application Framework C) to TAFJ (Temenos Application Framework Java), and integrating Temenos Payments Hub (TPH) into its operations.

Behind these moves was the risk of inaction. As new technologies and disruptors continue to reshape the Canadian financial landscape, Integris understood it needed to move with the times; a digital-first, mobile-first approach.

And they needed it fast. “Time was of the essence,” said Jeff Anderson, VP Information Technology at Integris. “We had one shot to get it right.”

Despite the project’s scale, Jeff assembled a lean, focused team—just himself, two developers, a project manager, and a small group of testers. The decision to self-deliver allowed for total control and discipline. “You have to guard the scope of the upgrade. Don’t let it change,” Jeff emphasized. Integris also chose to continue running its systems on-premises—a rarity in today’s market but a deliberate decision to maintain operational control.

Temenos’ flexibility played a key role in this success.

With close support from Temenos and a clear strategy: move fast, minimize customizations, and align with out-of-the-box functionality—the team stayed focused on delivering a clean, agile result. “We didn’t want to carry legacy complexity forward,” Jeff said. “We wanted to come out the other side with agility, not technical debt.” The upgrade has given Integris improved operational control, a more consolidated view of its business, and a foundation for next-generation digital capabilities.

Integris has been using Temenos Payments Hub (TPH) for several years to support e-transfers and ISO 20022-compliant messaging. The system has proved highly reliable, requiring little maintenance once configured. That gave Jeff and his team less thing to focus on.

“Through the recent upgrade, it didn’t require any changes. We were able to take it offline briefly and bring it back online without issue. That made a complex project simpler and less risky.”

The upgrade was completed in April 2025, and the impact was clear from day one. ‘Close of Business’ (COB) processing times dropped from over 3.5 hours to under 2. Staff gained back 1.5 hours per day through automated member notifications, which reduced the need for manual calls or emails. And audit logs improved dramatically, helping the team identify and resolve issues faster.

Even more significant was the new ability to accelerate product launches. Pre-built configurations and parameterization has made it easier to roll out services faster, with fewer technical dependencies.

Beyond these immediate wins, the upgrade has set Integris up for the future. Jeff explained the most valuable of these would be the number of APIs they can now access. “We can increase the efficiency of integrating with third parties. It’s going to be super-valuable.” His team has wasted no time in leveraging that new capability. Just a week after the upgrade, Jeff and his team implemented an alerting system for accounts going into overdraft —soon to be a legislative requirement in Canada—putting Integris ahead of the regulators. “We implemented that by taking some events happening on a daily basis within Temenos Core Banking and could pipe it into some other systems to automatically send alerts, which is a real strength of Temenos Core Banking,” said Jeff. They are also already working on integrations for open banking, payment rails, and mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. Temenos Payments Hub gives the institution a modern foundation to support this roadmap.

“The upgrade isn’t the finish line, it’s the starting point,” said Jeff. “We’ve now got the architecture to compete with fintechs and deliver services at speed.” Crucially, the transition also changed how the business and technology teams work together. With the product now driving processes (rather than the other way around), collaboration is tighter, and delivery is faster.

As a relatively small player in the market, the scale and speed of Integris’ modernization is even more remarkable. But having worked with Temenos for years, Jeff was confident it could be achieved “The world is full of people who want to tell you that what you’re trying to do is impossible. But if you have the right people and the right technology, anything is possible.” Ultimately, it came down to trust.

• One of the first banks in Malta to go live with SEPA Instant Payments.
• Transaction times reduced to seconds, with 24/7 availability.
• Compliance with SWIFT CBPR+ and TIPS, the European Central Bank’s instant payment settlement platform.

IIG Bank (Malta) Ltd., established in 2010, is a fully licensed credit institution regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA). The bank specializes in structured, supply chain trade finance promoting international trade and commodity finance in emerging markets. Despite having a team of fewer than 50 employees and a small IT department, it ranks as the 13th largest bank in Malta.

Al Ziyani understood that proactive innovation alone would not be enough. The bank would also need to keep pace with a continually evolving regulatory climate, to ensure any new products and features were compliant. And in 2024 and 2025, he was proven right, as IIG faced a significant challenge in adopting the upcoming SWIFT CBPR+ and SEPA Instant Payments regulations. As the bank’s operations evolved, so did its technology needs. To support future growth and ensure compliance with evolving regulations, the bank recognized the importance of a modern payment’s infrastructure, one that offers greater automation, interoperability, and scalability.

But the bank’s ambitions extend beyond Malta. “We have a global outlook,” said Heytem Al Ziyani, Head of IT at IIG Bank. “We aim to support customers and provide financial services wherever they are. “Digital is core to this vision”; but an outdated core banking system proved an obstacle to progress. “We see lots of opportunities to improve and to provide better services to our clients; but without the right technology in place, they can only be ideas.” The Bank took a bold step forward in 2017 when it adopted Temenos as its core banking system and partnered with Stoics IT for the first time for implementation.

IIG Bank turned to Temenos a trusted partner since 2017, and implementation specialists Stoics IT, recently acquired by Bahwan CyberTek (BCT), to design and execute a fast-track implementation plan. “As a small team, we work closely and collaboratively with our partners,” said Al Ziyani.  “So, getting the right fit – not just the technology, but crucially the right team too – is always a big decision for us. We ask questions: Do we fully understand the scope of these new regulations? How will they impact our systems and the services we deliver to our customers? And what actions do we need to take?”

These were the key topics to focus on and to address by the bank, Temenos and BCT. By bringing all parties together from the outset, the bank ensured alignment and collaboration throughout every phase of the project. This comprehensive coordination is essential in any modernization effort, enabling the team to move swiftly and effectively. “Precision and efficiency are key, we focus on getting every step right the first time,” said Al Ziyani.

And they were. In just six months, the bank upgraded its Temenos core banking system to R24 AMR release and implemented the instant payment module TIPS (the European Central Bank’s instant payment settlement platform) within its existing Temenos Payments Hub (TPH) environment. This was followed by the successful finalisation of SWIFT CBPR+.

Go-lives were achieved in quick succession: the Temenos core banking system upgrade in December 2024, instant payments in January 2025, and SWIFT CBPR+ in June 2025. “We delivered major go-lives within months. For a financial institution with a lean but well-rounded team across all departments, this was a significant achievement.”

The implementation of TPH and the system upgrade to R24 AMR release has brought full SEPA compliance, enabling seamless cross-border transactions across Europe. The bank can now process SEPA transactions in less than 10 seconds, with 24/7 availability. All transactions are automatically screened and reconciled, with no manual intervention required. Additionally, the move to the Temenos core banking system means the bank can integrate with other European digital platforms, and EU customers can now open accounts and manage transactions entirely online from anywhere in the EU.

“Imagine a German depositor opening a term deposit at a Maltese bank, with no branch presence in Germany, acting completely online, no manual intervention and no delays. That’s the power of this transformation,” Al Ziyani added. “The number of requests we now receive online to open accounts versus the traditional method of visiting our Malta branch… it’s incredible.”

Platform stability and performance have also improved, supporting the bank’s growing digital network and reducing reliance on manual intervention.

IIG Bank chose to expand with Temenos because of the platform’s ability to scale through automation and integrations, ensuring consistency with their lean operating structure.

The relationship goes beyond the product. Market expertise and a proactive approach during exchanges, especially when seeking solutions to the evolving requirement to remain compliant and meet regulatory expectations, are key ingredients of how Temenos continues to support its clients. “2024 and 2025 brought major changes in our sector. Temenos was with us for every step, helping us plan, adapt, and deploy effectively and on time,” Al Ziyani explained.

With the upgrading of the core and the payments layers, IIG is exploring automation in areas such as customer onboarding and fraud detection. Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation (FCM) already plays a central role in AML and transaction screening, and AI is firmly on the roadmap for future capabilities.