Leading South African Microfinance Institution Selects Temenos to Deliver Personalized Digital Customer Experiences

Barko Financial Services chooses Temenos software to reduce personal loan origination down to less than two minutes on mobile devices

Temenos, the banking software company, today announces that Barko Financial Services selected Temenos software to replace its legacy systems, in both core and front office, to offer a compelling and personalized customer experience. The microfinance institution will use cloud-native, cloud-agnostic Temenos T24 Transact, the next generation in core banking, and Temenos Infinity, the breakthrough digital banking product.

Barko Financial Services is in the process of applying for a banking license with the ambition to launch a retail bank that will challenge the status quo in South Africa by offering financial products aimed at better meeting the needs of lower-income South African consumers – Temenos will provide the technology to enable this strategy.

The microfinance institution has over 170 branches and caters for millions of modest-earning, but salaried South Africans such as government employees, mineworkers and civil servants. Currently, it takes Barko Financial Services 25 minutes to onboard a client and 10 to 15 for a new loan application. With Temenos’ packaged, integrated software, Barko Financial Services will dramatically reduce the time to originate loans, targeting re-loan applications to be completed in under two minutes and new loan completion in under seven minutes. The aim is to give customers, who are mostly located in rural areas, a compelling digital experience using mobile devices, thereby eliminating the need to visit a branch.

By selecting Temenos’ end-to-end digital banking platform, Barko Financial Services will benefit from accelerated project timelines and drastically reduced cost of deployment. The microfinance institution is expected to go live in six months. Cloud-hosted Temenos Infinity will allow Barko Financial Services to gain product agility and take new products and services to market faster. Temenos T24 Transact will enable the business to benefit from operational efficiencies at a lower cost of ownership.

Temenos has more than 25 years of global banking expertise and a local presence in Africa. Temenos consistently invests over 20% of its revenue into continually enhancing its packaged software, to develop the richest and deepest functionality in the industry.

Kobus de Wet, Chief Executive Officer, Barko Financial Services, said: “We are delighted to be working with Temenos as our strategic technology partner. Temenos has a worldwide reputation for robust, scalable banking software and an extensive presence in the African region. 

We selected Temenos’ packaged and open banking software to transform our customer experience, offer personalized products and services and drastically lower our total cost of ownership. With Temenos, we will be able to launch capabilities faster, if we get approval to establish a bank, and provide innovative products which are simple to use and tailored to add value to our target customers.

We wish to offer lower-income customers a personalized experience that is typically reserved for private clients.”Jean-Paul Mergeai, Managing Director – Middle East and Africa, Temenos, said: “Technology is playing a pivotal role in making financial inclusion a viable option for everyone. We are delighted to partner with Barko Financial Services, which joins the Temenos family, and it can leverage our experience of serving over 220 microfinance institutions as well as our expertise in helping new banks to launch. By selecting our cloud-native, cloud-agnostic packaged software Barko Financial Services will benefit from a fast implementation.

Barko Financial Services will be best positioned to leverage technology innovation to offer an outstanding customer experience at a reduced cost. We look forward to working with Barko Financial Services as it transforms the services that it offers to its customers.”