1. A new product catalogue, built on T24 arrangement architecture, provides retail banks with a product ‘factory', modeled on industrial scale product processing. Customers will benefit from greatly increased product manufacturing features including the ability to design, proof, and publish products and services to the new product catalogue, making it easier to configure and launch new products quickly and deploy them within T24's SOA infrastructure.
2. T24 R08 includes the release of ARC Internet Banking (ARC-IB), one of the ARC (Acquire, Retain and Cross-sell) suites of products. ARC was first made generally available in 2007 to provide clients with front- to back-office functionality within a single integrated environment of T24 including modules for operational and analytical CRM, and workflow processing. ARC-IB provides a fully operational, fully integrated internet banking website for client access to the bank's T24 system and offers state of the art security. ARC-IB is quick to install and implement and offers 'out of the box' functionality. This enables banks to have an operational website in a very short time. The first release of ARC-IB, which is currently being implemented by a number of banks, supports personal internet banking and intermediary internet banking. Corporate internet banking will be delivered later in 2008.
3. A second release of T24 Model Bank now incorporates a broad range of pre-configured products with more than 2,500 standard screens and 1,100 standard enquiries supporting in excess of 300 standard best practice processes. Model Bank provides an integrated solution for retail, credit, corporate, treasury and private. Since the products have been pre-cconfigured, all the operations available can be performed immediately upon installation. The Model Bank also comes pre-integrated with ARC, ARC-IB and the new product catalogue. Model Bank is ideal as an out-of-the-box implementations as well as a starting point for more tailored implementations.
4. T24 R08 also marks the first release of the TEMENOS Data Warehouse. This new facility helps T24 clients to benefit from deep, rich, management information direct from T24 system. It contains three foundation modules: online Extract, Transform and Load (ETL); a data warehouse data model; and a data mart which provides bank management teams with reports on profitability across a wide variety of attributes, including product, customer and department. It also includes a range of standard reports and business intelligence cubes and example analysis is provided using the Cognos© product set. Further data marts will be added to the Data Warehouse in future releases.

In addition to these significant enhancements, T24 R08 contains over 140 other enhancements including new features that are designed to further improve ease of use, application and regional support, flexibility and control. A new front end, T24 Browser 2, significantly upgrades the look, feel and use-ability across all channels.

For TCB, Temenos has looked to provide new features to help global retail banks overcome marketplace challenges, have more control over their operations and achieve their KYC objectives. Key areas of development in TCB R08 include:

1. An Enterprise Customer Information Management (ECIM) feature enabling global banks to have single global customer view of any relationship regardless of whether it's in TCB or on another system.
2. A new engine for the dynamic creation of data components. Banks can rapidly create and configure data components in the new ECIM and assign processes and functionality to them.
3. A unique global processing feature that goes beyond traditional 24/7 capabilities. The system can now handle concurrent processing from different time zones on the same software image. Global processing helps banks address the need for non-stop, multi-time zone servicing and electronic payments.
4. The release of a new function for the configuration of the financial entity providing a single point of entry and more visibility for making changes to their core banking function. This not only makes it easier for banks to make changes at the deployment stage, but gives them further scope to adapt the system to changing requirements.
5. A more comprehensive auditing and logging function that helps banks to drill down to the most granular level of detail. This enhances control over all banking activity and makes it easier for banks to address their regulatory obligations.

Andreas Andreades, CEO, Temenos, says: "We are driven by the ideal of delivering value to all our customers. Through our continuous product improvement programme resulting in a yearly software release, our banking systems will always be able support our customer needs and ambitions. We commit a greater proportion of our revenue to R&D than any of our competitors. In 2007, in cash terms, Temenos invested $65.7m in R&D (2006: $45m, an increase of 46%) or 20% of our revenues. This strategy ensures that our clients do not suffer from technology obsolescence and can take advantage of increased functionality year-on-year, thereby future-proofing their core banking systems and always staying ahead of their market."