Temenos Solution: Payments
The Arab Energy Fund
Scaling and Evolving Corporate Lending
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
At a Glance
- Deployed Arrangement Architecture (AA), Facility Lending, and Club Loan modules from Temenos Core
- First implementation of its kind across bilateral, club, and syndicated lending structures
- Automation of complex agency functions including fee management, pro-rata reconciliations, and covenant tracking
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.
Ready for more
For years, the Fund relied on Temenos’ SL module for corporate lending. The solution provided a strong foundation, but as deal structures became more complex and the Fund’s role expanded, the need for enhanced flexibility and automation grew.
With increased lending volume and more sophisticated structures, the Fund sought a modern platform that could streamline operations and support the full lifecycle of every loan.
Co-creating the future
The Fund worked closely with Temenos to define a solution that matched its operational needs.
Temenos really studied the market. They looked at customers’ needs, where existing solutions were falling short, and where the market was heading. Everything was about taking the guesswork out, and instead focussing on the facts and the evidence.
– Mohammad Khatib, Director, Information Technology at The Arab Energy Bank
The outcome of that exercise was the selection of Facilities Lending and Club Loan modules of Arrangement Architecture (AA), that are offered within Temenos Core Banking.
Temenos went on to lead the business requirements design phase, with Systems Arabia (formerly NDC) providing implementation support and integration expertise.
Go-live was achieved in November 2024, with immediate results.
Capable of more complexity
The new solution gave Arab Energy Fund the power to structure and service bilateral, club, and syndicated deals with far greater efficiency.
Manual processes were replaced with automations. The Fund can now handle multi-party disbursements, track covenants in real time, and reconcile fee and principal payments with accuracy and speed.
We delivered everything we set out to achieve. It’s simpler, more flexible, and more accurate; and all this relieves pressure from our teams.
– Mohammad Khatib, Director, Information Technology at The Arab Energy Bank
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.
These tools have further enabled our ESG strategy. We can now create and manage green loans with the precision and transparency required.
– Mohammad Khatib, Director, Information Technology at The Arab Energy Bank
More automation
With lending modernized, the Fund is now expanding its transformation. It is currently implementing Temenos Payments Hub (TPH) and exploring Temenos SaaS and AI-based analytics.
Internally, it has also launched an automation project called Intelliflo, combining Microsoft Power Automate, RPA, and Co-pilot AI to streamline operational tasks outside the core platform.
These solutions give the potential for further automation, in turn allowing the Fund to focus resources on higher-value tasks, such as serving more complex customers, and delivering higher-impact deals, all while staying aligned to its ESG vision.
Every year, we aim to do something new in the system, so we keep evolving. With Temenos, we have the platform and the partnership to do exactly that.
– Mohammad Khatib, Director, Information Technology at The Arab Energy Bank
We partnered successfully with:
Systems Limited is a global technology public limited company founded in 1977 with the mission to offer holistic transformations to its clients.
Banking solutions for all segments
Empowering banks across segments with scalable, innovative, and efficient solutions.
Integris Credit Union
Modernizing with purpose and discipline
British Columbia, Canada
At a Glance
● 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.”
On their own terms
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.
That flexibility in how we wanted to manage the upgrade is not something that you can do with other vendors. The people that you choose to either partner with—like Temenos, professional services or third-party partners—or your internal staff, they have to be excellent. You cannot do an upgrade on time, on budget without great people.”
– Jeff Anderson, VP Information Technology at Integris
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.
Zero payments downtime
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.”
Immediate results
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.
We saw improvements immediately after go-live. The system’s responsiveness, the logging, the automation, it all worked.”
– Jeff Anderson, VP Information Technology at Integris
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.
Set for future success
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.
History of trust
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.
We knew the platform. We trusted it. And we knew we had the right people on both sides to make it work. By staying true to the core product and avoiding unnecessary complexity, Integris has laid the foundation for future innovation, scalability, and member-centric service. We’ve got a solution that can move at the pace we want, and scale as we grow, to wherever our members need us to be next.”
– Jeff Anderson, VP Information Technology at Integris
IIG Bank (Malta) Ltd
Scaling Instant Payments with a lean, well-rounded, and efficient team.
St. Julian’s, Malta
At a Glance
• 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.
Regulation – the catalyst for change
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.
“We needed a platform that would adapt to changing regulation, able to scale with us, and connect seamlessly with the outside world.”
– Heytem Al Ziyani, Head of IT at IIG Bank
A six-month sprint to instant payments
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.”
“Deep expertise and strong project discipline are always essential in these kinds of projects. With the right people in place and a clear plan, progress is achieved even better than in larger teams that are less structured. This was especially true at IIG Bank, where strong internal team alignment, together with a close partnership with Temenos and BCT, played a key role in the project’s success.”
– Madhan Visvanathan – Head of Temenos Practice at BCT
Real-time payments, real business impact
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.
Flexibility – the competitive edge
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.
“In modern banking, you need to be able to connect to a network of solutions. The strength of Temenos is its adaptability. We can integrate with any platform, comply with new regulations, and roll out new services quickly.”
– Heytem Al Ziyani, Head of IT at IIG Bank
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.
A smarter future
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.
“Our future is digital. And with Temenos, we have the platform and the partner to keep evolving, while maintaining the focused, lean operating model that we value.”
– Heytem Al Ziyani, Head of IT at IIG Bank
We partnered successfully with:
BCT is an exclusive sales and delivery partner for all Temenos products and solutions in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Mauritius Commercial Bank
Laying the foundations for future innovation by simplifying and renovating the core banking environment
Port Louis, Mauritius
Mauritius Commercial Bank
Laying the foundations for future innovation by simplifying and renovating the core banking environment
Port Louis, Mauritius
Mauritius Commercial Bank
Laying the foundations for future innovation by simplifying and renovating the core banking environment
Port Louis, Mauritius
Mauritius Commercial Bank
Laying the foundations for future innovation by simplifying and renovating the core banking environment
Port Louis, Mauritius
At a Glance
- Achieved a 70% reduction in workloads for the bank’s internal development teams
- Able to schedule one upgrade at least per year per subsidiary with a 50% shorter execution time.
- Create development environments within a day instead of 5 days
- Consolidated 4 separate core banking instances to a single technical stack
- Completed initial upgrade of Temenos Core in 6 months following a phased, low-risk strategy
- Reduced cost operation by 1M USD compared to previous setup
- There has been at least 90% improvement in overall automation testing
Founded in 1838, Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB) is the oldest and largest banking institution in Mauritius. MCB provides a range of personal, corporate and institutional banking services through a local network of 40 branches. The bank also maintains a strong regional presence, operating through subsidiaries and associated companies in Madagascar, Maldives, Mozambique, Seychelles, Dubai, South Africa, Kenya and France.
Although MCB has a long history, it has always focused on looking forward. The bank has built a reputation for innovation, being the first financial institution to introduce ATMs to Mauritius in the 1980s. It was the first to launch a mobile banking app: MCB Juice, which has since, upgraded several times to allow users to check their accounts, transfer funds, manage cards, pay bills and view investments among others all while on the move. A new beta version of the mobile banking application is under test that will reveal further enhancement and new functionalities.
Reza Chady, Architecture Chapter Lead at MCB, confirms: “Innovation plays a very important role in our culture, and we pride ourselves on being able to adapt to a demanding operating environment. Today, customer preferences and regulatory requirements are evolving rapidly. To stay ahead of the change, we need banking systems that are flexible and adaptable, while also providing a secure environment for delivering our services.”
Getting fit for the future
As part of this continuous push to innovate, MCB set out on a journey to update and transform its core banking infrastructure. The bank has been using Temenos Core since 2007 and, after years of expansion, it felt that the time was right to change the bank’s setup. Key objectives for MCB were rationalizing what had become a complex systems landscape, and achieving greater economies of scale and speed across multiple subsidiaries and banking functions.
“Our core banking landscape has not grown in a very uniform way,” explains Reza Chady. “Previously, we maintained 5 different versions of Temenos Core, with individual environments for each operating entity. This approach was overly complex, and made it difficult to scale the business and execute new strategies in a unified way—not to mention adding considerable cost and management overheads.”
Core banking, upgraded
To rationalize and streamline its core banking environment, MCB decided to consolidate all of its separate entities on one centralized Temenos Core technical stack, running in its private cloud. This cloud-powered platform has shaped the heart of a new digital backbone at MCB, transforming current business and operational processes to gain greater efficiency, agility and innovation.
For its new private cloud environment, MCB opted for a container-based architecture. The bank’s development team already had a positive experience using the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform for creating containerized applications for its digital channels. So naturally, the team was keen to build on the platform again when it came to the core banking renovation.
Assembling an expert team
The core banking upgrade and private cloud migration represent one of the bank’s most ambitious recent projects. To minimize risk and ensure a smooth execution, MCB engaged Temenos services experts for their support and guidance.
Managing a project of this scale and complexity requires precise coordination among all partners and a high level of trust. We were very pleased with the strong working relationship we built with Temenos. The collaboration between our teams has been extremely productive, and that’s evident in the quality of the deliverables.”
Reza Chady, Architecture Chapter Lead at MCB
Adopting a low-risk, step-by-step upgrade strategy
Together, MCB and Temenos identified that a phased approach was the smartest way forward for the upgrade project—reducing complexity and risk. As the first stage in the implementation, MCB migrated the core banking environment of one of its entities in the Maldives onto the latest version of Temenos Core.
Reza Chady continues: “The initial upgrade took around six months to complete and went very smoothly. Since then, the latest version of Temenos Core has been working perfectly, as is the Red Hat OpenShift environment. The combination of Temenos and Red Hat has proved really powerful, and we are very pleased with the stability and performance we have achieved since the upgrade.”
Following Maldives successful and smooth upgrade, we proceeded with MCB Mauritius core banking upgrade from R23 to R24. Following another positive outcome and smooth implementation, this upgrade has been extended to our remaining regional subsidiaries—Seychelles has been upgraded to R24, while Madagascar continues on R23, ensuring alignment with regional deployment strategies.
Currently, the Mauritius COB time has been reduced to around 2 hours 20 minutes from an initial average COB time of around 7 hours.
Strategic Adoption and Modernized Management with OpenShift
MCB strategically selected the OpenShift Container Platform as its container orchestration solution for its robust enterprise features, which have greatly enhanced operational agility and efficiency.
Leveraging OpenShift, each Application Server instance is deployed as an independent Pod, simplifying management and ensuring isolation. Horizontal Pod Autoscalers (HPA) dynamically scale workloads based on performance metrics, while Prometheus provides real-time monitoring and alerting for proactive system oversight. In addition, OpenShift’s rollout-based restart mechanism enables application instances to restart without service interruption, ensuring zero-downtime deployments and improved service availability.
Ongoing initiatives
In parallel, the bank is rolling out the Temenos Extensibility framework, which will allow it to connect its core banking platform to different third-party services.
MCB is deploying Temenos Payments Hub in November 2025 and evaluating the Temenos Data Hub to enable near-real-time data processing.
Increasing agility and cutting costs
MCB is already getting compelling results from its core banking upgrade. With Temenos Core running in its private cloud environment, MCB has opened up a whole new world of agility and scalability, which has already accelerated time-to-market for new client services with a streamlined development pipeline. MCB will now be able to schedule one upgrade at least per year per subsidiary with a 50% shorter execution time.
Today, we’re deploying new services faster, with fewer issues during release management and more controlled access to production. Before, it took around five days and the efforts of multiple teams to create new development environments; now, we create them within a day. We estimate that this has resulted in a 70% reduction in workloads—and we expect to build on these efficiencies as we automate more workflows.”
Reza Chady, Architecture Chapter Lead at MCB
The bank is also unlocking major cost savings by consolidating on a single core banking instance and database, as Reza Chady explains: “By migrating to Temenos Core in our private cloud, we expect to reduce our hardware estate by at least 70%. Likewise, by consolidating from individual instances to a single core banking platform and database, we expect to realize significant savings on licensing costs, as well as administrative and maintenance resources.”
Reaching new horizons
The benefits and value of the core renovation will only increase as MCB works to bring more of its entities onto the latest version of Temenos Core. Building on the well-established partnership with Temenos, the bank is looking forward to a brighter future.
We have been working with Temenos for 15 years now. In that time, it has been amazing to see how far their technology has come. Temenos Core has evolved into a truly modern, sophisticated platform with a robust architecture and rich capabilities. We are very excited to have Temenos as the backbone supporting our ongoing digital transformation.”
Reza Chady, Architecture Chapter Lead at MCB
We partnered successfully with
MCB Consulting
MCB Consulting Services Ltd (MCB Consulting) has been fully incorporated in June 2014 as a wholly owned subsidiary of MCB Group Ltd, the largest financial services provider in Mauritius and increasingly in the region.
Red Hat
Providing a clear modernization path to adopting a cloud strategy for core banking, digital banking, wealth management, fund management, and payments systems.