Cognizant, ABN AMRO and KBC Bank, Ireland were among the winners of the Temenos 2015 customer and partner awards, recognising their excellence in collaboration and use of its financial services software.
The awards were presented at a gala dinner on Wednesday at the 16th Temenos Community Forum (TCF) in Istanbul.
KBC Bank, Ireland won the product innovation award having invested in state-of-the-art core banking and digital capabilities, and pioneering a number of new Temenos technologies. With new systems, it now takes the bank under 12 minutes to bring a new customer on board and just hours to launch new products compared to weeks or months previously. In the first quarter of this year, the bank grew total customer numbers by 10%.
"We wanted the newest technology, and with hard work and the support of Temenos, we got there," said Evert Vandenbussche, COO of KBC Bank, Ireland. "Our group sees Ireland as a potential incubator for T24 as a core banking solution for the future."
The excellence in customer service award was won by Blue Shore Financial of Canada for improving customer service and delivering innovative new products. More than 80 per cent of the Canadian firm's clients believe that it has helped to increase their financial wellbeing and offers good-value products and services and the firm is growing more than twice as fast as its peers.
The prize for supporting growth went to Metro Bank, which launched in 2010 as the first new retail bank in the UK for 100 years. Metro now has more than 31 stores, with another 10 to open this year, and boasts over half a million customers.
Navin Soni, Business Systems Analyst Manager, said Metro still has broad ambitions to shake up the existing British banking model. "Temenos has helped us deliver a solution to enter the challenger market and fulfil that promise," he said.
"It's all about innovation for us, and as we get bigger and expand digital channels, we need a system that can scale. T24 is flexible and has a very strong core engine."
BOQ Specialist Bank, Australia, a Temenos customer since 2008, was awarded the improved efficiency prize. The bank has made extensive use of T24, regularly upgrading and adopting new functions while staying close to the core release.
Angelica Stein, the head of systems at the bank in Sydney, said T24 has helped open the door to product innovation, especially in the home loans area. "Our own developers have worked hard with Temenos to get to this point. The collaboration has been very strong."
The Temenos chairman's award went to ABN AMRO in recognition of its significant and growing commitment to using Temenos software for its global operations. The bank has been using Temenos software since 1998. In 2009, ABN AMRO adopted T24 in its corporate business, in 2011 it embarked on a project to co-build a new payments engine and this year it has taken WealthSuite for private banking operations globally.
The Temenos sales partner of the year was Deloitte, having brought the most leads that converted to deals in 2014. Deloitte has been influential in helping Temenos win deals globally, most recently in North America.
Cognizant won two awards: partner innovation of the year and services partner of the year. The former was won for wealthQUAY, a full wealth management "as a service" solution for large independent financial advisers, family offices and small private banks, which was launched at this year's TCF. WealthQUAY uses Temenos products such as Triple A Plus and DataSource.
The services prize went to Cognizant based on direct feedback from Temenos customer surveys. One Temenos customer, who has worked with Cognizant, said: "the quality of work is exceptional".
Finally, the complementary solution provider of the year was EFS Technology for achieving the most sales and acting as an early advocate of Temenos's MarketPlace product, putting apps and widgets into the first version.