Kenya Commercial Bank goes live with Temenos T24 to strengthen operations and drive regional business expansion

GENEVA, Switzerland – 2 February 2009: Temenos (SWX: TEMN), the global provider of integrated core banking systems, today announced that Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), the largest bank in East and Central Africa, has gone live with TEMENOS T24 (T24) to support its retail and corporate banking operations. The bank went live with T24 in 145 branches across Kenya, supporting approximately 675,000 accounts. This is the first implementation phase of T24. Further phased roll outs of the system are expected in 2009 to support KCB’s planned expansion to include a further 75 branches across East Africa, helping to grow customer accounts to over two million in the next two years.

Mr Martin Oduor-Otieno, CEO, KCB, says: “With T24 supporting our business, we have the scalability, front-end capabilities and systems integration we need to deliver technology driven products such as internet banking, to offer a faster, more effective service to our customers. With T24, we can significantly improve our customer service approach to withstand increasing competition across the region from both local players and new market entrants.

T24 will set us in good stead to achieve our growth objectives across the East and Central African region.” The bank opted for T24 Model Bank for Universal Banking, which includes pre-configured products and best practice processes to reduce implementation time and costs, minimise customisation and lower the project risk.

T24 replaced the bank’s TC3 core banking system from CMC, which had been in place for over 10 years, along with several other disparate systems to consolidate KCB’s entire operational infrastructure. This will significantly improve business efficiencies while enhancing its competitive position across the region. The bank will also roll out ARC Internet Banking (ARC IB), Temenos’ front office suite during 2009. Launched in June 2006, ARC IB has now been selected by more than 50 banks worldwide.

A dedicated team of Temenos Professional Services specialists, including Temenos Application Management, deployed T24 Model Bank including treasury, retail, corporate and wealth management functionality on an Oracle database. A regional Temenos office was established in Nairobi to ensure that the bank had continual support throughout the project. Temenos’ robust implementation methodology enabled KCB to go live on T24 in all of its 145 branches simultaneously, following a “big bang” approach, which drastically slashed transitional architecture and infrastructure costs. The total project duration from contract signing to go live was 18 months, despite the challenging political conditions in the country during the last year.

Andreas Andreades, CEO, Temenos, adds: “It is clear that the current economic climate will have a wide reaching impact on the global banking community, including Eastern and Central Africa. Despite this, KCB recently reported steady growth and we are fully confident that T24 will help the bank drive its expansion plans forward during a difficult time for the industry both regionally and globally. Eastern and Central Africa is a growing market and we are committed to strengthening our presence in this region moving forward into 2009.”

T24 Model Bank is packaged core banking software which includes banking best practices based on Temenos’ implementations in over 600 financial institutions and 120 countries across the Retail, Corporate, Universal, Private Wealth, Islamic and Microfinance and Community banking sectors. Its highly automated approach delivers short implementations, guarantees lower cost of ownership with rapid and measurable ROI. T24 allows banks to replace a large number of disparate legacy systems, thereby streamlining their operations. Banks around the world use T24 to rapidly deliver innovative, market-driven products and services tailored to meet the changing needs of their customers. T24 enables banks to deliver growth, while managing risk and cost, and ensuring that they remain ahead of the competition with the most efficient and economical business model in the market.

T24 provides banks with unparalleled richness in functionality on an integrated, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), with front- to-back office support and is fully enabled for standard SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) web services, and BPEL process execution. Temenos’ total commitment to open standards enables its customers to benefit from the latest advances in technology, ensuring business agility, continuity, data integrity and reduced downtime, all resulting in a significant delivering a significant, immediate and ongoing ROI.

About Kenya Commercial Bank
Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) is a leading banking and financial services institution in Kenya, with over 155 branches spread over the countries of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Southern Sudan and Rwanda. In addition the bank has over 298 Automated teller machines (ATMs) across East Africa. KCB prides itself as the only regional bank that offers all its customers products and services on one platform across the region. The bank’s asset base is over Keshs 180 billion.

About Temenos
Founded in 1993 and listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SWX: TEMN), Temenos Group AG is a global provider of banking software systems in the Retail, Corporate & Correspondent, Universal, Private, Islamic and Microfinance & Community banking markets. Headquartered in Geneva with 44 offices worldwide, Temenos serves over 600 customers in more than 120 countries. Temenos’ software products provide advanced technology and rich functionality, incorporating best practice processes that leverage Temenos’ experience in over 600 implementations around the globe. Temenos’ advanced and automated implementation approach, provided by its strong Client Services organisation, ensures efficient and low-risk core banking platform migrations. Temenos annually invests around 20% in R&D, significantly more than its peers, into a single fully packaged upgradeable software release, which ensures all Temenos customers benefit from modern technology and support indefinitely.

For more information please visit www.temenos.com