Temenos Enterprise Frameworks Architecture unveiled; T24 gets upgrade

TEFA is fundamental to supporting Temenos' vision to provide a complete universal banking solution, 'out of the box', with banking components suitable for all banks, everywhere. It is based on standard software, so banks can invest with confidence in proven products with clear roadmaps and dedicated support. TEFA addresses the major challenges banks face: it enables banks to better know and serve their customers; to comply with regulatory requirements; and to reduce the cost of deploying, maintaining and upgrading banking systems - greatly reducing transaction costs. Because TEFA represents an evolution of the existing T24 architecture, customers can incrementally adopt it, reducing risk and cost.

John Schlesinger, Chief Enterprise Architect, Temenos, says: "Temenos is not about reinventing the wheel. Nor are we distracted by building middleware or workflow, or other generic software. We're solely focused on developing award-winning banking software for the world's leading banks. What we are developing in TEFA leverages and builds on our 20 year investment in T24, combined with a super partner ecosystem - it's a true 'out of the box' universal banking platform, with banking components for institutions of any size. We are committed to lowering the TCO for our customers, while enabling banks to compete through innovation. TEFA paves the way for tier one banks to renovate their core banking systems in a controlled, incremental way."

TEFA is delivered via an evolutionary roadmap set to roll-out over the next three years. Two of the frameworks - Platform framework and Integration framework - are available in the latest version of T24, Release 12, also launched today. The Integration and Design frameworks will be available in T24 R13, and the Data and Component frameworks will be brought online within the next three years.

A fully-componentised banking platform, TEFA is based on six frameworks:
Component framework: Separates individual modules within the T24 suite into individual, best-of-breed modular banking products. Banks can deploy exactly and only the solutions they need, without the need to replace the entire core banking system. This reduces the risk of change for banks and renders upgrades firmly in banks' control. Due to the 'AppStore' nature of the componentised architecture, third party applications can be swiftly incorporated into the suite, fuelling continuous innovation.

Interaction framework: Enables a world class user interface and experience to banks and banks' customers. User interfaces are changing more rapidly than banking capability. Supporting banks to meet this challenge, TEFA separates the user interface from the banking capability, to deliver a flexible interface with the agility to meet continuously evolving customer and employee requirements. If an enterprise is running multiple software platforms including T24, the interaction framework can mash-up all these systems to create user agents that match exactly the needs of the bank.

Integration framework: Moves integration from the banking capability to an integration hub, allowing many-to-many integration, rather than one-to-one. This code-free integration dramatically speeds up implementation time, meaning banks can boost their competitive edge by bringing new capabilities to market faster. By subjecting every transaction to a pre-defined set of business rules, the integration framework ensures that each transaction has only one possible consequence in the core banking system but possibly many consequences in the enterprise, these being taken care of by the integration middleware.

Data framework: Separates transactional data from reporting data to optimise processing efficiency and data visibility. As banking shifts from in-branch to internet and mobile channels, the look-to-book ratio will dramatically increase by as much as 100-fold. In order to provide meaningful information to customers, banks need to separate read-only from read-write data and only back-up the data that changes. Banks who cannot separate this out will start to drown in the data deluge as databases exceed five terabytes. Banks who achieve this data separation will be able to store all customers' transactions online, not just a few months' worth, and so provide better customer service. The transactional database will also become much smaller in volume, which will help banks' move into the cloud.

Design framework: Separates design-time from run-time data, in a model-driven development environment. Designing and implementing a new banking capability within a live production system is fraught with risk - the risk of impacting the performance of live transaction processes, and the risk of modifying live data or structures. Model-driven development reduces this risk and reduces the time to configure and customise banking systems and improves the time to market.

Platform framework: Separates commodity resource management capabilities from banking capability so that the platform is technology-independent and commodity skills are all that is required to run core banking systems. Temenos is committed to providing banks with the freedom to choose complementary systems and the platform framework allows banks to easily adopt new operating models including running applications in the cloud and integration of mobile functionality. The platform framework enables Temenos to support its platform partners' products rather than having to provide its own middleware, reducing the skills needed by the banks and giving them greater choice. 

Separately, Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the market leading provider of banking software, today unveiled the latest release of its core banking product, TEMENOS T24 R12. Investing in best-of-breed, 'out of the box' technology and functionality is at the heart of Temenos' product strategy, as it consistently provides innovative banking products to its global client base. The functional enhancements to T24 R12 provide Temenos clients with a detailed insight into their customers' financial positions and behaviours, providing a platform for true customer centricity whilst lowering total cost of ownership (TCO) and protecting investment in technology - supporting financial institutions' future profitability.

Using real-time analytics, T24 R12 features functional enhancements which provide a clear and detailed understanding of individual customers, enabling institutions to provide tailored advice and products to meet each individual's needs. Significantly enhanced communication channels support seamless customer interaction and enable banking clients to easily self-serve using internet, mobile and tablet devices. The ARC channel solutions provide users with access to a full suite of banking transactions and services, as well as recommendations for new products and services that have been assessed based on the individual's circumstances, in a uniquely secure environment. R12 has seen continued investment in functionality to support rapid development and launch of new products, allowing its banking user community to promptly respond to market and customer demand.

Mark Winterburn, Group Product Director, Temenos, says: "In T24 Release 12 we have placed a great deal of emphasis on supporting our clients in protecting their greatest asset - their client base. The enhancements to our channel and business intelligence suites are true differentiators, not just for Temenos, but also for our clients. Our commitment to innovation is made possible by the strength of the platform we are building on. That same platform also gives our clients choice - enabling them to provide exceptional customer service whilst maximising efficiencies and reducing total cost of ownership. Temenos will continue to lead in the evolution of banking software and technology, supporting our clients to stand out from their competitors."

The new functional enhancements of Release 12 include:
- Two new products of the Business Intelligence suite, Customer Insight and Operational Insight. Customer Insight provides banks in-depth analytics so they can better understand customer needs, in order to make individual recommendations and design new, relevant products. Operational Insight enables banks to streamline their business processes and focus on meeting customer demands efficiently.

- New banking apps for iPad - using OData, the open standard data protocol backed by Microsoft, to deliver iPad apps for Corporate Banking clients and Private Wealth advisors, providing them with an efficient method to access their data. All apps are native, utilising the latest Temenos technology to provide data security and user authentication.

• The Corporate Banking app provides corporate clients a detailed single view which lists and provides details of their associated accounts, transaction histories and pending transactions. Customers can originate and receive secure messages and authorise outward payments in real-time. The device dependency of the security is unique, reassuring users and protecting them and the financial institution against financial loss.
• The Private Wealth Advisor app enables relationship managers to view lists and details of their clients, as well as their individual alerts, secure messages, and work-list items. The relationship managers are empowered to provide the best advice to each client, at whichever location the client chooses to meet. It provides a single client view, including details about portfolios, valuations and offers detailed portfolio analysis including transactions, allocations and performance.

- A new interface for ARC Internet which enables banks to rapidly design and adopt a modern internet user interface, to provide an exceptional user experience and allow the institution to integrate multiple applications into a single customer view.

- A number of new features for ARC Mobile, providing more functionality 'out of the box', and a platform to support development of new services, features, and easy deployment of new plug-ins. The new release of ARC Mobile also provides deeper support for mobile payments. The branchless banking technology features a pre-configured integration between T24, ARC Internet Banking and ARC Mobile, allowing for single registration of customers across multiple channels. The range of connectivity options has been expanded to include SMPP and USSD.

- New features in the Arrangement Architecture (AA), including savings plans, enabling banks to set up savings schedules and track payments to remunerate loyal customers accordingly.