Banco Ficohsa selects T24 to improve its customer experience
GENEVA, Switzerland, 25 February 2009: Temenos (SWX: TEMN), the global provider of integrated core banking systems, today announced that Banco Ficohsa, one of the largest banks in Honduras, has selected TEMENOS T24 (T24) to support its retail and corporate banking operations, servicing 650,000 accounts across 88 branches in Honduras and the United States. Banco Ficohsa signed the deal in December 2008, making it the first privately owned commercial bank in Central America to implement T24.
GENEVA, Switzerland, 25 February 2009: Temenos (SWX: TEMN), the global provider of integrated core banking systems, today announced that Banco Ficohsa, one of the largest banks in Honduras, has selected TEMENOS T24 (T24) to support its retail and corporate banking operations, servicing 650,000 accounts across 88 branches in Honduras and the United States. Banco Ficohsa signed the deal in December 2008, making it the first privately owned commercial bank in Central America to implement T24.
Banco Ficohsa selected T24 Model Bank for Universal Banking based on its ability to fully support the bank’s strategy to improve its customers’ experience through the introduction of new products and a wider range of user friendly service channels. The bank also selected TEMENOS ARC (ARC) Internet Banking and Mobile modules from Temenos’ suite of front office applications. These will be implemented alongside T24 to extend the single customer view across the front and back office, enabling Banco Ficohsa to tailor and improve internet and mobile channels for a more personalised and positive service. This will include new mobile banking transfer options and a selection of online deposit, savings and loan services.
T24 will replace the ABANKS solution from Arango Software, which has been in place for over a decade, to consolidate the bank’s entire operations on a single, open platform. T24’s pre-configured products and best practice processes will provide Banco Ficohsa with more flexibility in product development and reduce the number of systems previously needed to launch new products. All of this will be achieved at a significantly lower operating cost.
Camilo Atala, CEO, Banco Ficohsa, comments: “Our customers expect convenient, agile services and a comprehensive set of products that can satisfy all their individual financial needs. T24 will enable us to offer improved services through an increased number of channels, including reducing loan disbursement from days to hours and direct debit options to make regular activities such as bill paying easier. Corporate customers will benefit from convenient cash management services so money can be invested overnight and liquidity can be handled more efficiently”.
Atala adds: “Online and mobile service channels will be tailored to make the banking experience even more personal, professional and positive and encourage the increased use of these channels among our client base. In addition, staff will have access to better customer information from the integrated CRM capabilities of T24 to improve cross sell ratios and marketing campaigns, further tailoring our approach. This investment in T24 demonstrates our ongoing commitment to providing the best possible finance services in Honduras and will be fundamental for customer growth and retention”.
The bank will employ the Temenos Implementation Methodology (TIM) to deploy T24, including retail, corporate, financial reporting and internet banking functionality on IBM servers and an Oracle database. The system is expected to go live in Q1 2010.
Andreas Andreades, CEO, Temenos, comments: “This win not only demonstrates our growing footprint in Latin America and competitive position in the current financial climate, but shows that banks are continuing to invest in core banking technology to drive growth and deliver excellent customer service at a time when it is most needed. As our first client in Honduras, we are delighted to be working with Banco Ficohsa to strengthen their product and service capability.”
About Temenos T24
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 Banco Ficohsa
Banco Ficohsa, member of Grupo Financiero Ficohsa, a financial group with headquarters in Honduras, also includes Interamericana de Seguros (insurance company), Divisas Corporativas (foreign exchange office) and Probursa (brokerage firm), was founded in 1994 as a commercial banking institution with corporate operations being the focus of the business. Five years ago, its market share in the retail segment began to increase, and now Banco Ficohsa is one of the leaders in this business line. Today the bank has 88 branches, across 22 cities nationwide.
Ficohsa has diversified its business, and in its quest to continue increasing the market share in the retail segment, the stakeholders decided to open a Money Remittance Company, Ficohsa Express, a non-banking affiliate of Banco Ficohsa, to tend to the needs of Hondurans in the United States. In 2001 the bank opened the first money remittance branch and the number has grown to 17 Ficohsa Express offices in the States of Florida, Virginia,Georgia, North Carolina, New York, New Jersey and Louisiana.
Banco Ficohsa competes with both local and worldwide banking institutions, and is one of the leaders in the financial market in Honduras, ranked as 3rd in both Deposits and Total Assets. In 2006 the Representative Office in Miami, Florida was opened, making an important statement as the first bank in Central America to open a representative office in the United States.
Banco Ficohsa is also a leader in Corporate Social Responsibility, through Fundación Ficohsa that was created over a decade ago, as an institution dedicated to help raise educational conditions and standards in preschool education. Actions such as: granting free school meals, rebuilding preschools, qualifying the teachers by standardising procedures and knowledge, helping surrounding communities, has benefited over 10,000 preschoolers.
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 52 offices worldwide, Temenos serves over 700 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. Temenos is top of the IBS Sales League Table 2008, winner of the Best Core Banking Product category in Banking Technology magazine’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2008, winner of the Financial-i Leaders in Innovation award for the most innovative core banking systems solution 2008 and is listed in the American Banker top 100 FinTech companies.
For more information please visit www.temenos.com