Temenos on M&A trail to grow US business
Temenos keen on US success
Temenos is keen to make it a success in the US, and is looking for more acquisitions to complement its existing offering to the US market.
In an interview with FinTech Futures at the recent Temenos Community Forum (TCF) in Dublin, Jay Mossman, chairman, the vendor’s North America advisory board, says the areas of focus are anti-money laundering (AML), fraud and wealth management. For the latter, trust accounting is especially of interest, as it’s specific to the US.
He adds that the opportunities are ample for these areas as there are plenty of interesting firms and products.
Mossman himself joined Temenos as a result of an acquisition – his company, Akcelerant Software, was purchased by the banking tech vendor in 2015. He then became regional CEO for Temenos in North America, and has recently moved to the chairman role.
Emily Steele, who also comes from Akcelerant, was appointed president of Temenos North America (she was previously COO) at the start of this year.
Mossman says the potential AML and fraud tech purchases will add to the vendor’s existing compliance capability, which also came via an acquisition. Temenos bought Trinovus in 2013, which came with a portfolio of compliance products and 800+ users in the community banking space.
This portfolio continues to be developed and marketed, Mossman confirms, as well as Akcelerant’s own lifecycle solution (used by around 600 financial institutions in the US). “It is actually exceeding our expectations,” he notes.
In the core banking space, Temenos targets top 120 banks and credit unions in the US (over $10 billion in assets). Below that threshold, Temenos is “opportunistic”, Mossman says, i.e. it has to be a progressive, forward-looking financial institution to engage with Temenos for the T24 core banking system.
T24 has now been certified by an external specialist as being fully US compliant, Mossman adds.
There are currently two known takers of T24 in the US: Ally Financial and Commerce Bank.
Ally Financial also signed for Temenos Payments Hub (TPH). The project at Ally is known to have experienced some difficulties, but is progressing.
At Commerce Bank, T24 will support customer accounts and deposits. Mossman says deposits are “a sweet spot” for Temenos in the US. The bank will be migrating from the legacy Trisyn core system provided by US-based Infor. (Trisyn is a very old system – it was actually sunsetted a number of years ago and now has less than ten banks left still using it; among these was Zions, which has now moved to TCS Bancs).
Cognizant is assisting with the implementation at Commerce Bank.
Mossman confirms the project is “fully on track” and in line with the original timelines that “have not been moved”.
