Dr. Diane Karusisi, BK Group CEO says the Bank’s relationship with Temenos will help drive its three-year digital transformation strategy.
Bank of Kigali (BK Group Plc) has entered a deal with Temenos – a Switzerland-based global tech company specializing in banking software, to help Rwanda’s biggest financial institution in terms of assets to transform its digital banking agenda.
Temenos works with over 3,000 firms across the globe, including 41 of the top 50 banks that rely on the company to process both the daily transactions and client interactions of more than 500 million banking customers.
According to BK Group, the partnership with Temenos aims at powering its digital transformation journey in order to support its regional growth plans and realize its financial inclusion objectives.
With Temenos packaged and upgradable banking software, Bank of Kigali Plc will gain business agility and dramatically lower the cost of deployment.
Through this partnership, according to BK officials, the bank will be able to deliver innovative products and services specifically to underserved segments of the economy and key population demographics like the youth and the unbanked.
The Bank, which cross-listed on Nairobi bourse as part of its quest to capture regional market, plans to increase the number of customers to one million by 2021, up from more than 400,000 clients today.
The lender which recently made a $1 billion mark, said in a statement that it is transforming its legacy IT systems using Temenos T24 Transact, the next generation core banking software product, including the Advanced Analytics, Reporting, Risk and Compliance modules; with additional capabilities to be provided by the Temenos Payments product.
Temenos’ functionally rich and scalable banking software will also help Bank of Kigali to simplify and automate its processes, significantly grow its digital banking customer base and provide a 360-degree customer view through a single digital banking platform.
By implementing Temenos’ software, the bank will be able to introduce innovative products and services more quickly to support its growth ambitions and continue to pursue its vision of becoming the financial institution of choice.
Dr. Diane Karusisi, BK Group Chief Executive Officer said, “We are excited to expand our relationship with Temenos, which will form the foundation to drive our three-year digital transformation strategy.”
Temenos’ cloud-native and cloud-agnostic banking software will help reduce deployment costs and drive simplicity and efficiency of operations. The new open digital banking platform will enable us to gain a deeper understanding of our customers’ needs and allow us to provide the best-in-class customer experience.”
Jean-Paul Mergeai, Temenos’ Managing Director for Middle East and Africa said, “As the bank’s technology partner during this exciting time of digital transformation, we look forward to working hand in hand with Bank of Kigali Plc as they strive to provide the most innovative financial solutions in the region. We believe that financial institutions can only become truly digital when they transform their end-to-end operations and we are the best provider to help them realize their digital vision.
The Bank has a distribution network comprising of 68 branches, 13 outlets, 9 mobivans, 1,477 agents and serves over 290,000 individuals and over 24,000 business entities.
The Bank has a wide distribution network that includes self-service channels such as deposit taking ATMs and Point of Sale terminals as well as channels that are geared towards promoting financial inclusion such as mobile vans.
