Five key takeaways from Temeno’s Asia Pacific regional forums

The financial sector in Asia Pacific is changing rapidly. Consumer expectations have increased significantly as a result of the digital revolution and the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That’s why banking software company Temenos organized a series of industry events across the Asia-Pacific region to engage global and regional banks, fintechs and hyperscalers to gain insight into how the banking industry should both respond and reposition itself to navigate an evolving banking landscape more effectively. .

More than 1,100 total industry participants gathered across 11 cities – Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Taipei, Jakarta, Singapore, Hanoi, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Phnom Penh – between August and November.

Themed ‘Everyone’s Banking Platform’, each event’s agenda was tailored specifically to the trends and opportunities that exist in the specific market.

Key takeaways from Temenos Regional Forum APAC 2022

1. An open platform for integrated banking

During the forums, composite banking services were identified as the future of banking.

Banks must have the ability to offer innovative financial solutions to their customers. This implies a need for unprecedented levels of business agility for bankers operating in the region.

They must be able to deconstruct legacy banking systems, distill the essential elements that deliver value to customers, and then recompose the critical components into cutting-edge, agile value propositions to become the banks of the future.

Because of this, it is even more important for a banker to look at several important considerations when choosing a technology platform for their bank.

Driven by industry-leading investment in research and development, Temenos offers rich, localized and packaged functionality with open technology – running on any hardware, database or platform and ensuring upgradeability.

But recognizing that success with new business models in banking requires the right technology and platform for agility, scale and innovation.

This platform will enable the banks to:

• Create new banking solutions based on detailed banking functions
• Integrate with third-party solutions in a fintech ecosystem, such as Temenos Exchange
• Use solutions the way customers want, including on-premise, and on any private or public cloud or as SaaS.

Craig Bennett

“The combination of these customers’ expectations and disruptive technology is causing the banking value chain to be split between the production and distribution of financial products.

This is to organize banking activities in smaller clusters, with fierce competition across several areas between traditional banks and new players.”

said Craig Bennett, Temenos’ Asia-Pacific managing director.

2. Recipes for success when tapping into the cloud

Another hot topic that was often raised during the regional forums was online cloud banking.

In this rapidly changing competitive and regulatory landscape, banks need a robust cloud platform to evolve with strict regulation and new data and security requirements.

They also need scalability and open technology to quickly evolve with customer requirements.

Cloud banking best practices were discussed in terms of the “Seven Success Recipes” if financial institutions want to take full advantage of the cloud – namely security, data, migration, resilience, hyper-scalability, multi-cloud and regulation.

For over a decade, Temenos has been delivering SaaS software to customers on the Temenos Banking Cloud, with over 700 SaaS customers worldwide and more than USD 1 billion in R&D investment.

3. Buy-Now-Pay-Later as a hinge against digital lending

The rise of Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) seemed to have captured the interest of the audience at the Temenos Regional Forums in APAC.

BNPL’s growth is slowing in many markets, but is still expected to grow significantly in the long term.

In terms of region-wide penetration, Indonesia, India, Japan and Singapore are estimated to be the next emerging markets with 3% each of BNPL market share across payment methods.

Just as the BNPL model continues to grow and evolve, it remains an unregulated market in most countries.

This means that despite how convenient BNPL financing can be for consumers, there are potential risks and downsides to consider – which has quickly led to increasing regulatory scrutiny around the world.

And therefore a comprehensive BNPL system will benefit key parties along the way.

For example, because BNPL schemes typically do not charge interest or fees, rather than relying on a fixed repayment schedule, loan origination costs are much lower than other financial models, such as credit cards.

Banks and non-BNPL fintechs now stand to be the main beneficiaries of this shift in the financial landscape as the market grows – for example, faster time to market, improved customer experience and greater scalability.

Technology providers like Temenos offer a comprehensive, SaaS, AI-powered solution that empowers banks and fintechs to create amazing BNPL experiences for customers and merchants.

This thoughtful and comprehensive approach to the BNPL space was designed to cover the entire BNPL lifecycle – from merchant BNPL setup to customer service.

4. Reimagining wealth management in the region

There is a significant increase in mobile natives and tech-savvy people in Asia-Pacific, and smartphone penetration is increasing.

At the same time, most of the wealth in the region is tied up in family-owned businesses or property – which will change hands over the next few years.

This greatly affects the generational transfer of wealth to younger investors who will want to engage with their advisors in completely different ways.

How will banks and wealth management firms structure a service that will appeal to these younger, mobile native and digitally savvy customers without alienating those who have the wealth right now (ie the older generation)?

These issues were raised during the forums. And with the rapid onset of Covid-19-related challenges, banks and wealth management companies sought to accelerate the transformation of their wealth operations to improve the customer experience.

Temenos Wealth is unique in its breadth and depth, with digital customer experience, hyper-personalized services and highly automated processes that enable banks and wealth management firms to serve Ultra High Net Worth Individuals and Massaffluent clients.

5. Next generation digital banking services in Asia Pacific

Asia-Pacific is poised to become the next battleground for digital and neobanks, with existing players stepping up their expansion plans as well as new players entering.

This is because the region has the potential to become a huge market for digital banks.

During some of these events, different groups of panelists – which include experts from digital banks, hyperscalers and Temenos – discussed how Covid-19 has accelerated digital banking in the region and how it has proven to constitute a critical segment of the banking sector.

The need for digital banking to be integrated into small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and those that do not have a financial bank and sub-bank is of the utmost importance to unlock the potential and drive nations further into a digital economy.

Transformation of banking experience

Temenos and event sponsors Microsoft and Red Hat have partnered with market intelligence firm IDC to share Asia Pacific Trends to Watch in retail banking, corporate banking and fintech.

Make banking better for everyone

Temenos Regional Forum 2022 aimed to reshape the perspectives of the Asia Pacific banking community on what is possible as they continue to become the banks of the future.

As the financial sector navigates the emergence of new banking models, fierce competition and next-generation technology, they need a reliable partner along the way, and Temenos can help.

Temeno’s banking capabilities and ecosystem are designed to help organizations engage and support banking customers, increase market share and scale banking efficiently and effortlessly – empowering everyone to build the banks of tomorrow, today.

To learn more about everyone’s banking platform, click here.