The bank has opted for the T24 Model Bank, with pre-configured products and processes for a fast, low-risk migration, following the successful implementation of T24 at Swedbank's Shanghai branch, which went live in June 2007.

Swedbank is the leading bank in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania serving nine million private and 480,000 corporate customers. As part of its international expansion strategy, Swedbank established a branch office in Helsinki in October 2005 to support its strong customer base of Swedish corporates in Finland and the Baltics.

Madis Tapupere, head of CIO strategy and architecture for Swedbank says: "Our Finnish operations have been successful and we are now looking to expand our customer base in this region, offering a broader and more complex product mix in response to our customers' needs. T24 will enable us to centralise our banking operations, achieve banking best practises and provide a full range of corporate banking services to this market."

Swedbank signed the contract with Temenos in September 2007 and the project is expected to go live by Q3 2008. T24 will replace the bank's in-house system which has been in place for two years.

A joint implementation team will roll out the T24 Model Bank solution, which includes pre-configured products and processes for banking best practise in order to reduce implementation time and costs, minimise customisation and lower the project risk. The bank has selected corporate banking modules including loans, cash management and financial calculations.

T24 will be deployed on a Sun Unix Solaris platform, located in Swedbank's head office in Stockholm, using an Oracle database. This architecture will enable the bank to run all international branches from a central location without the need to deploy a full server platform for the system in each site. With one set of interfaces, centralised operations and expertise for T24, the bank will reduce time to market for new products. Regional customisation is being carried out for local clearing and local banking networks, including support of local banking standards for cash management.

Andreas Andreades, CEO Temenos, adds: "We are delighted to further expand our partnership with Swedbank. The breadth and depth of functionality in T24 has proven itself suitable for the bank's operations across the globe. Swedbank has confirmed yet again that our Model Bank approach combined with our strong professional services team is the obvious choice for replacing core banking systems."