ACLEDA Bank upgrades core system to meet growth trajectory

GENEVA, Switzerland - 16 January 2013 - Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the market leading provider of banking software, today announces that Cambodia's leading commercial bank, ACLEDA Bank ('ACLEDA') is upgrading to T24 R12 - the latest version of Temenos' core banking system - expected to go-live in Q1 2013. Over the past decade, T24 has been the backbone of ACLEDA's IT infrastructure, helping to grow its profits at a compound annual rate of 30%. ACLEDA's work with Temenos is part of an aggressive strategy to connect with the unbanked across Cambodia - global financial indicators report that only 4% of the country's population have a formal bank account [1]. This figure demonstrates the huge expansion opportunities available in Cambodia for ambitious retail banks, calling for the latest in core banking technology to help manage large customer on-boarding numbers.

Originally a microfinance institution, ACLEDA evolved into a full retail bank in 2004 and now has a 238-strong branch network across Cambodia, with an asset size of $1.9 billion. Its year-on-year growth in assets has ranged between 28-46% over the last five years, averaging at 33%. ACLEDA anticipates customer acquisition to double over the next five years, adding to its existing one million account holders. Temenos played a crucial role throughout this period, providing a low cost, flexible and scalable platform that allowed ACLEDA to expand its operations and differentiate its offering, whilst extracting the operational efficiencies of this growth. Intrinsic to ACLEDA's continuing success is T24 R12's faster processing power, having the ability to compute larger data volumes and increase efficiencies across the business at a low total cost of ownership (TCO).

Dr. IN Channy, CEO, ACLEDA Bank, commented: "We are experiencing huge expansion opportunities to connect with the unbanked and this upgrade project is part of our aggressive strategy to do just that. Testament to our efforts, our customer base has recently hit the one million mark. We always aim to serve our customers at the highest possible standard and T24 makes this possible by providing the flexibility to react to consumer demand with functionality to support rapid product development. In turn, this increases our profitability and ultimately our loan base which will grow alongside our customer numbers - taking control of our bottom line.

"We have always been an advocate for T24 and will continue to use the technology in the long-term. Our staff are very familiar with how to easily maintain the solution, increasing our efficiency levels. Unlike other international and local vendors, Temenos can get a project up and running in as little as six months - time to market being a deal breaker for a growing institution like us, which needs fast roll-outs." 

David Arnott, CEO, Temenos, commented: "The key to banking the unbanked is cost of provision, rather than problems of access or demand. As ACLEDA has grown and expanded beyond microfinance to fully-fledged retail banking, T24 has enabled it to extract economies of scale, and as such, lower the cost of providing basic banking services. This has been key to ACLEDA's ability to grow customer numbers and revenues so quickly."

ACLEDA's accomplishments have been recognised by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its business advisory council, winning the award for growth and employment at the 2012 Most Admired Asian Enterprise awards ceremony.

David Arnott continued: "With plans in the pipeline from ASEAN to expand the Cambodian connectivity infrastructure to help support the population's banking needs, it is the opportune time for Cambodian institutions to implement the latest core banking technology. This will enable financial institutions to promptly respond to market forces through innovation and product development, ensuring the best customer service possible and the lowest cost of provision."

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 About ACLEDA Bank

ACLEDA Bank has 238 branches and offices throughout Cambodia, 28 branches and offices in Laos, and 1 branch in Myanmar with the total assets over US$1.9 billion by the end of October 2012. It has four Subsidiaries such as ACLEDA Bank Lao Ltd., ACLEDA Securities Plc., ACLEDA Training Center, and ACLEDA MFI Myanmar Co., Ltd. and strategically we are going to expand our operation in to the ASEAN region and all potential countries along the Mekong River. 

About Temenos

Founded in 1993 and listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX: TEMN), 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 financial institutions. Headquartered in Geneva with more than 55 offices worldwide, Temenos software is proven in over 1,500 customer deployments in more than 125 countries across the world. Temenos' products provide advanced technology and rich functionality, incorporating best practice processes that leverage Temenos' expertise around the globe. Temenos customers are proven to be more profitable than their peers: in the period 2008-2010, Temenos customers enjoyed on average a 30% higher return on assets, a 46% higher return on capital and an 8.5 percentage point lower cost/income ratio than banks running legacy applications.

For more information please visit www.temenos.com.

Temenos contacts:

Ben Robinson
Director of Strategy and Marketing
Tel: +41 22 708 15 35
Email: brobinson@temenos.com

Michael Golding
Head of Communications
Tel: +44 (0) 207 423 3751
Email: mgolding@temenos.com

Andrew Smith
Head of Investor Relations
Tel:  +44 (0) 207 423 3713
Email: asmith@temenos.com

Grace Keeling
Hotwire for Temenos
Tel: +44 (0) 207 608 8362
Email: temenos@hotwirepr.com

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