The rapid implementation has enabled AF Bank to launch T24 in their Ufa head office and 5 regional branches, including new operations in Moscow, as part of a growth drive throughout Russia. With a strategic focus on the growth in retail and corporate banking markets, the bank aims to become one of the leading banking groups in Russia in the next five years.

"Replacing ten systems with T24 has transformed our infrastructure, giving us the functional breadth to expand our product range. Furthermore, we can now offer 24x7x365 services to our retail and corporate client base, a fundamental requirement in banking today. Operational integration and business process automation means we can now leverage a single customer view to enhance service quality whilst minimizing IT costs; since running T24 we have generated a significant reduction in cost per transaction. We now have fully built in best practice processes which enable us to be compliant with the regulatory requirements of the Central Bank of Russian Federation and T24's inherent flexibility means we can quickly adapt to legislative change", comments Aidar Zubairov, Chairman of AF Bank.

"We are delighted to welcome AF Bank to the Temenos user community. As one of the leading banks in the Ufa region, running on an in house system was clearly proving costly and hindered its ability to deliver products in line with customer needs, restricting its competitive position. With T24, AF Bank gets the advantage of the world's leading international banking solution while also delivering specialist local support for the Russian market, including regulatory reporting and accounting. We are pleased to see that T24 is already enabling AF Bank to open new branches and broaden its product and service set, giving it wide reaching appeal as it expands into new markets and increases profitability. As its partner of choice for core banking support, Temenos is excited to be part of the bank's success as it works to achiieve its growth objectives." commented Keith Stonell, Regional Director, Temenos.

The bank deployed T24 in a phased approach, with the system running on IBM servers with a UNIX database.