It is as Temenos says quite fairly “a material deal.”
Cue David Arnott, CEO of Temenos:
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“Temenos is honoured to have been selected by Openbank to support them with their digital journey and growth plans. This is a highly disruptive and strategically important deal, demonstrating the acceleration in thinking among tier 1 banks as they move to their digital future and reinforcing Temenos’ position as the partner of choice for the world’s largest banks.
“To offer a truly digital experience which consumers demand, banks need to renovate their legacy systems. They see the benefit in adopting a build-and-migrate approach to minimise time-to-market and to extract maximum value.”
Temenos reportedly beat off a rival proposition from Infosys’ Finacle offering to bag the Openbank deal.
Ezequiel Szafir, CEO of Openbank, added:
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By GlobalData“We are very excited to count on the know-how and speed to market that Temenos will provide us, as we continue to build one of the best digital banks in the world”
Openbank’s ambitions are ambitious, not to say wildly ambitious given its slow growth to date since its initial launch.
It currently has around 1 million customers.
In the next year it aims to target a growth in customer numbers to 30 million.
That is not a mis-print; it is targeting 30 million customers in the next 12 months, representing a major ramping up of ambitions for a banking unit that launched initially as a telephone banking subsidiary as long ago as 1995.
In June this year Openbank revealed plans to overhaul its operations, transferring all IT and client transactions to the cloud as well as an overhaul of its internet and mobile banking offerings.
Santander said that its new Openbank platform has been developed over the past 15 months in Spain using some of the most advanced technologies and is one of the first banks in the world to use a cloud-based IT infrastructure.
New features launched in the past quarter include:
- Completely digital customer onboarding process with videoconference identification or, if the customer prefers, via messenger or using the IBAN of any bank;
- Customers can see their account status at-a-glance and personalise and configure according to their needs. They can also include their own photograph or avatar, increasing security;
- Access to a 24/7 virtual branch where each customer has his or her own, dedicated team of account managers;
- Expenditure categorisation that can be compared with the previous month;
- Cards can be blocked or unblocked from a smartphone if lost, and
- Information about investment trends among other clients or access to consumer credit in a few steps.
Ana Botin, Banco Santander Executive Chairman said: “We want to offer personalised financial services, accessible from anywhere, at anytime. For people who prefer an exclusively digital service that is simple, agile and available via smartphone, with the guarantee of the Santander Group, Openbank is the answer”.
Openbank claims to be one of the first banks to make extensive use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, allowing the bank to tailor product offerings to individual customers, increase security and fraud protection and continuously improve the speed and quality of credit decisions, such as mortgage approval.
All of its commercial activity and risk algorithms for loans and credit cards are fully based on AI. The digital marketing is also partly based on programmatic purchasing, which enables the Bank to deliver more customised and relevant advertising.
Openbank expanded its range of products to offer a complete suite of banking products to all of its customers from current accounts and deposits, to loans and mortgages and a range of investment products including funds, pensions and shares.
