Swiss core banking vendor Temenos has appointed Microsoft veteran Koen Van den Brande to the newly created position of group strategy and marketing director.
Reporting to COO Mark Cullinane, Van den Brande will be responsible for driving product and marketing strategy worldwide from the firm's London office.
Van den Brande joins from Microsoft, where he was worldwide industry manager for core banking. He was also CTO of the Microsoft Financial Services division for Emea.
At Microsoft, Van den Brande worked with Temenos and other vendors and banks to launch the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) to promote and support the implementation of service orientated architectures (SOA).
Prior to Microsoft, Van den Brande was president and CTO at Polaris Software Labs and held management positions at Misys and Midas-Kapiti.
Says Van den Brande: "I have observed how the Temenos brand has developed significantly and look forward to leveraging the company's strong position further for continued growth."
With Van den Brande's appointment, former group strategy director Mark Gunning takes on the newly created role of group retail banking director. He will be responsible for driving the development and execution of Temenos' global retail banking strategy and building the company's presence in this sector.
This year Temenos has also appointed Mike Head as global partners director and Gareth Jones as retail business development director as it looks to strengthen its senior management.
However, the vendor is also reducing its workforce in a cost-cutting exercise, according to sources close to the company. Finextra's sources say that up to 200 jobs will go globally, but Temenos CEO Andreas Andreades says the figure will be less than that.