Aktia renews its core banking system

Press release  7.11.2013                                                                                                                            

Aktia renews its core banking system

Aktia Bank is renewing its core banking system, with a completion date in 2015. The renewal is a major step in Aktia’s Action Plan 2015, which aims to make Aktia the Finnish champion in customer service, and to enhance its competitiveness.

The renewal of the core banking system was necessitated by changes in customer behaviour and banking regulation, as well as the current challenging economic situation.  Aktia is targeting yearly cost savings of €5 million in IT costs, and more cost-efficient processes. The total investment is €30 million, inclusive of Aktia’s internal work.

“The renewal of our core banking system will allow us the flexibility to develop more efficient processes and enables us to launch new products and services across all channels – including branch, phone, internet banking and mobile – much faster than before,” says Magnus Weurlander, Director of Banking Products and Processes at Aktia.

Aktia and the current service provider, Samlink, have agreed on services during a transitional period, as well as the services that Samlink will provide in the future. Samlink will also support Aktia during the core bank replacement project.

New solutions to comply with future needs

Aktia has chosen the international provider of banking software systems, Temenos´ T24 core banking system, and the Swedish Emric's credit processing system, as new platform for the core banking systems.

“Both service providers are market leaders in their respective fields, and cooperation with them enables us to leverage on development initiatives from other banks globally and in the Nordic region. Our choice of vendors was based on their proven solutions and ability to respond to changed needs in banking” says Weurlander.

“We are delighted to have been chosen by Aktia Bank to replace its core banking system with T24. Temenos is committed to driving innovation in Finland and the Nordic countries and we look forward to working with Aktia. Aktia will also benefit from Temenos’ industry-leading levels of research & development which will allow them to continuously improve the functionality and technical performance of their core banking system”, says Jean-Michel Hilsenkopf, Temenos Regional Director for Europe.

Emric is specialised in solutions and credit management services with a focus on the Nordic market. With Emric’s solution Aktia will be able to provide better and faster services, thus improving customer service.

“We at Emric are delighted to be entrusted to provide our solution for loan origination and administration to Aktia. Our cooperation with Aktia is an important step in our further expansion of Emric in Finland.We believe that together we will be able to enable the best possible service to the bank's customer”, says Pedram Tadayon, CEO Emric.

About Temenos

Temenos Group AG is the market-leading provider of banking software systems to retail, corporate, universal, private, Islamic, microfinance and community banks, wealth managers, and other financial institutions. Headquartered in Geneva with 58 offices worldwide, Temenos software is proven in over 1,500 customer deployments in more than 140 countries across the world.

About Emric

Emric is the leading Product and Service provider with a Nordic base and global presence. Our customers are banks, finance and leasing companies.  Emric is a spin-off from a banking and finance business established in 1994 and since then the business has been increasingly refined so that it today focuses entirely on providing services and powerful solutions for the various stages of the credit sales, decision and administration processes. Emric has approximately 200 personnel within the two business areas of Products and Services. In addition to the head office in Stockholm, there are offices in Kalix, Uppsala, London, Belgrade and Jakarta.  

AKTIA BANK PLC

For more information, please contact:
Magnus Weurlander, Director, tel. +358 10 247 6383

Aktia in brief:
Aktia Group provides a broad range of products within banking, insurance and real estate agency. Aktia operates mainly in coastal areas and inland growth areas. Aktia has about 300,000 customers who are served by nearly 1,000 employees at branch offices and via Internet and telephone services. Aktia's shares are listed on the list of NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd. For more information about Aktia, see www.aktia.fi