Max Chuard, Temenos CEO, opened the Temenos Community Forum 2022 (TCF) introducing a number of the key themes to be covered during the conference, from embedded finance, to disruptive technologies, disintermediation, new business models, composable services, and sustainability.
Observing the changing attitude of customers, Chuard noted that after 20 years at Temenos they are seeing more change now than in all that time. “Customers are used to easy, convenient, and personalised experiences. From global platforms like Netflix or Amazon and this is now what they expect from banking too.”
Yet, he pointed out that “disruptive technologies” like cloud, APIs and AI are making it possible to not only provide customers with a seamless journey, but also by providing intelligence to improve their lives.
Chuard added that these technologies are “driving rapid scalability and innovation and they are highly cost efficient. This is crucial, as 76% of banks cannot even afford to cover their cost of capital.
“This is a massive disruption and it’s a crucial new revenue stream. This market will be worth $3.6 trillion by 2030. But things are moving so fast, the new players are nimble, with no legacy technology to hold them back. They are scaling up their models extremely rapidly. Up to 20% of banking revenues could shift to these new players by 2025.”
Chuard described Temenos’s banking platform as being akin to “lego blocks,” allowing customers to build customisable services using a personalised sandbox. “This is a platform where services can be built and consumed by everyone, existing and new customers. Whatever the segment they serve - retail, SME, corporate or wealth, their size, geography or whether they are an established bank, a challenger or a fintech. That’s why it is Everyone’s Banking Platform.”
Moving on, Chuard highlighted a few notable customer success stories, including Mirabaud, the 200-year-old Swiss wealth management bank. Chuard stated that Mirabaud’s success is due to taking a “passionate human approach to clients, but they recognise that wealth management is changing rapidly. There is increased competition and a new generation of customers who expect a human touch combined with technology.
“A 200-year-old bank is using the latest SaaS technology.”
Another example Chuard provided was of Green Dot, a firm which Chaurd reports holds the aim of being the biggest bank nobody has heard of. Chuard described that Green Dot is using Temenos services to “provide both services, and BaaS at the same time, creating new products at speed and embedding them into ecosystem in other industries. As they grow our platform scales to grow with them.”
Composable banking - the next stage of plug and play?
Prema Varadhan, chief product and technology officer at Temenos, put forward the idea that there are new players that are in need of some kind of financing or banking platforms in order to properly service their customers. “What we believe the banks to have to do to get themselves ready for these different business models and changes in the ecosystem, is the need for composable banking.”
Varadhan noted that the growing ecosystem is a “plug-and-play” environment, citing the growth of business models such as Banking as a Service (BaaS) and banking as a platform.
A second aspect Varadhan pointed out as necessary is extensibility, stating, “you need extensions at the granular level, you need extensions at an API level, at a data model level, at a rule level, and at a simple configuration of a business parameter level.”
Third, Varadhan argued that hyper-personalisation is necessary to keep up with this ecosystem. She added that customers are used to a more personalised experience, and when it “comes to the funding or financing option, this shouldn’t drop to a more generalised experience.”
Varadhan also highlighted the need for multi-entity processing, where “on your single platform you can generalise certain products and services, but you can specialise certain products and services for certain regions. That’s complex banking, and we know how to do complex banking.”
A final point Varadhan raised was the need for efficient data migration. She explained that as you deal with business model changes and modernise platforms, you need the ability to “migrate data quicker and cheaper in a highly performative and scalable manner.”
The points raised by Varadhan were followed by demonstrations from both Ramki Ramakrishnan, director, global business solutions at Temenos, and Tony Coleman, chief technology officer at Temenos. These showed how to use the Temenos platform to create a sandbox for products, and some of the technology behind how it works.
AWS extends partnership with Temenos
Ross Mallace, executive vice president, global head of SaaS and partner ecosystem at Temenos, and John Kain, head of banking and capital markets at AWS, discussed digital banking and Platform as a Service. During this discussion they announced that AWS and Temenos were extending their contract.
Kain commented: “One of the great things about our partnership is that we're working together to take advantage all those abilities of cloud from a cost efficiency, security, compliance and governance perspective in the background.
“What has really happened since the pandemic is a sense of urgency has changed. Pre-pandemic these things were business as usual. People were progressing to an end stage that was important but didn’t seem that urgent. Then with the pandemic you see this immense need to transform the way banking is experienced by customers.”
Both Kain and Mallace emphasised the need for hyper-personalisation, reflecting a certain theme of the conference reflecting not only the products but the customer experience. However, Mallace pointed out the importance that cloud has played and continues to play in the current ecosystem, stating: “cloud has already paved the way and remove those barriers to entry that have allowed a lot of these new innovative propositions and fintechs come to market and really start to change the landscape.”
The importance of ESG was also raised during the discussion, with Kain commenting that firms can actually be “doubling the efficiency and power consumption just by moving to a more modern platform, you see how sort of all those innovations are actually tying together, not just that you have the benefit of not only paying for what you use, but what you're using is more green.”
How does your platform create value?
Kicking off the post lunch session, Temenos’s relatively new president and chief revenue officer Erich Gerber took to the stage. Having only joined the company in March 2022, Gerber noted that “I’ve spent all my life in the front office in sales. I know the value of a customer. I know how to behave.”
He commented on some key patterns he has seen, providing the example that “in 1994, there was a thing called Microsoft Money. There were 100,000 households in 1994, who used this as online banking. By 2024, it is estimated there's going to be 2.5 billion online bankers.”
Gerber was joined by Sagheer Mufti, COO of HBL and Marcel Ooijevaar, head of strategic change programmes at NN Bank.
When asked about banking as a platform, Mufti said: “We strongly believe technology strategy has to follow business strategy. Business strategy is what should drive discussions around platforms and technology partners. The value has to be for our business model.”
Mufti continued: “We process 35% of the country’s payments and collections. To do that, you need to have the right platform, the right capabilities to support you.”
Ooijevaar spoke about strategy and ensuring digital banking is within the insurance umbrella, describing that they are disrupting their own business. “We are an insurance company, but by offering payments and offering these services to our customers, we can transform the company into an instant company. Always on, always everywhere, seven days a week, 365 days a year. At the end of the day, it’s not about banking and insurance, it’s about delivering services to your customers.”
Doing something practical to achieve sustainability
The last panel of the day was far from the least important in that it was a discussion about how sustainability and innovation go hand in hand.
Led by Kalliopi Chioti, chief ESG officer at Temenos, the session explored how ESG is now at the top of banks’ agendas. “We heard all day that banks have been able to digitally transform and this is mainly driven by financial and compliance pressure, increasing competition and customer demand. And cloud has enabled banks to answer these challenges. Cloud is also helping banks address other key challenges like the race to get to and climate change. We can all see that climate change now is a global pressing issue. Pressure coming from regulators, and pressure coming from central banks for transition to a low carbon climate resilient future.”
When asked how they have achieved the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit, Ivan Mazzoleni, CEO of Flowe commented that “sustainability means making profit, without profit and reducing the total cost of ownership at a minimum level, you cannot create real and viable sustainability.”
Andrew Moor, CEO of Equitable Bank added that “sustainability and innovation have to go hand in hand, you can’t innovate without being sustainable.” Moor further announced that it is within their own plans to get to Scope 3 carbon emissions disclosures from all their suppliers by the end of this year.
“Sustainability has been at the heart of what we have been developing over the years as a company, and this continues to guide us as we strengthen the additional capabilities of Microsoft cloud,” stated Patrice Amann, regional business lead - EMEA financial services at Microsoft Industry.
“Double down on math, understand what your carbon footprint is in all different scopes. Be responsible and take accountability,” he concluded.