Press release
New commercial and technology agreement is expected to accelerate return on investment of mission-critical core banking operations.
GENEVA and REDMOND, Wash. - Dec. 10, 2009 - Temenos Group AG, the market leading provider of integrated core banking systems, and Microsoft Corp. today announced an alliance for delivering core banking solutions with TEMENOS T24 and Microsoft SQL Server to greatly increase operational efficiencies of large-scale banks worldwide.
By choosing the Microsoft platform, TEMENOS T24 customers will benefit from open, modern technology to accelerate innovation, greatly increasing the speed and effectiveness with which new products and services are created. This increased operational efficiency enables front-line staff to provide superior customer service at a lower total cost of ownership.
Temenos is seeing significant customer demand for the Microsoft platform. Already 21 banks have selected TEMENOS Insight, the business intelligence (BI) suite announced in March 2009, demonstrating strong demand for business intelligence in core banking operations. Leveraging the BI capabilities of SQL Server, TEMENOS Insight enables T24 users to analyze and track financial performance, understand customer profitability, and manage risk.
Temenos and Microsoft worked with North Shore Credit Union (NSCU), recognized as one of Canada's most profitable financial institutions, to deliver a new core banking solution with a strong data management platform based on TEMENOS T24 and Microsoft SQL Server.
"Ours is a fiercely competitive market, and the combined TEMENOS T24 and Microsoft SQL Server platform helps us attract and retain members by providing expert, proactive financial advice based on clear data," said Fred Cook, chief information officer, NSCU. "If you're going to be nimble in this industry, then you'd better have a stable banking platform that supports that. The ability to use a Microsoft-based platform to help integrate our entire data management environment and make quicker business decisions is key to giving us a greater competitive edge. It really helps us to provide a broader range of products to our members at a reduced cost."
According to Robert Hunt, senior research director at TowerGroup, "banks are realizing that the core systems they implemented more than 20 years ago have become difficult to maintain, costly to operate and cannot support complex relationship products. As these banks look to replace their core system, they will want to select a core banking system and platform that best meets their specific requirements." Hunt stated that "the Microsoft operating platform software and the .NET architecture together provide functionality and scalability comparable to that with mainframe and UNIX-based platforms" and that "leading global core vendors now offer Windows-based versions of their core processing systems. These offerings should lead more large banks to choose a Windows platform when they implement a new core system."
The new agreement will see both parties collaborate more closely and commit technical, marketing and sales resources to bringing a flexible, high-performance and reliable core banking solution to market, which fully optimizes the use of the Microsoft platform with T24.
"Microsoft has a long-term commitment to supporting mission-critical operations in financial services. Our alliance with Temenos provides our largest financial services customers a cost-effective platform on which they can build future-generation processing capabilities that meet the evolving demands of their business," said Susan Hauser, vice president, Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft.
Andreas Andreades, CEO, Temenos, added: "We have observed a growing interest from our customers and prospects in deploying the Microsoft platform for their core banking operations. The recently announced T24 signing of Bank SinoPac in Taiwan, a regional bank with 4 million customers that will run the system on the Microsoft platform, illustrates this trend and provides further evidence that large retail banking operations seek to benefit from the capabilities offered by SQL Server. We are delighted to be increasing our collaboration with Microsoft and that we are able to offer all our customers - regardless of size - the benefits associated with this choice of platform."
