Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the software specialist for banking and finance, announced on December 6th that one of Egypt's top five retail banks, Housing and Development Bank (HDB), known for real estate loans, has successfully gone live with Temenos core banking system. Masaref, Temenos' Egyptian partner, implemented the transformation project within 2 years – overcoming the challenge of replacing an in-house legacy system which had been deeply customized to cater for HDB's specific requirements. With 64 branches and 1.5 million customers in Egypt, Housing and Development Bank offers both Retail and Corporate Banking services. HDB's choice to replace their in-house legacy systems with Temenos Core banking UniversalSuite will support the bank's ambitious growth plans, including opening new branches and developing new products to increase its customer base. The implementation project, which involved the training of over 1000 bankers, and migrating the data for the bank's 1.5 million customers, followed the ambitious ‘Big Bang Approach' across all 64 branches. This allowed all of HDB's operations to benefit from the new technology in the quickest possible timeframe. "With our ambitious expansion plans, deploying state-of-the-art technology was becoming an imperative. Now, with Temenos banking solutions in place, we can deliver our growth strategy and increase our customer base through enhanced customer experience and new product development capabilities." Fathy El Sebai, Chairman of Housing and Development Bank, said. "As the leading real-estate bank in Egypt, increased efficiency and control over internal procedures will enable us to continue to achieve our profitability ratios and statutory reporting compliance. This puts HDB in a leading position among Egyptian Banks and in a top position compared to any other Bank in the Real Estate business in the country." "Data and Transaction Services Company (DTS), one of companies under the umbrella of Housing and Development Bank since 2009, played a key role in the management of the project and helped liaise between Temenos partners – Masaref – and the Bank on various fronts", El Sebai added. "We are delighted to have added Housing and Development Bank to the growing list of our live references in Egypt. By selecting Temenos to underpin its system transformation, Housing and Development Bank is leveraging technology that will allow them to streamline processes for much higher business efficiency, better compliance, faster customer service, as well as achieve better integration across different business units." Jean Paul Mergeai, Managing Director for Middle East & Africa at Temenos commented. "I would to congratulate the bank and our local partner Masaref for this successful implementation We are particularly happy with our excellent collaboration with Masaref whose dedication, resourcefulness and expertise helped us overcome all the challenges that are likely to arise during the delivery of such an important programme." Mergeai added. "We take pride in the team of local Egyptian talent who successfully delivered this critical core banking replacement project. We will continue to invest in local talent to ensure we continue to deliver and support Temenos customers in Egypt and the region." Mohamed Goneid, Chairman of Masaref, said.
