Bank of Africa UK is consolidating a suite of core banking systems down to Temenos Transact and shifting all infrastructure hosting – from the core banking to its ERP systems – to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
That’s according to Chief Operating Officer (COO) Mohammed Anouar Kouhen, speaking to The Stack; all part of a broader digital transformation effort at the bank, with go-live scheduled for July-August 2023.
Bank of Africa UK was previously running “different pieces of systems… mainly Finastra Trade Innovation; Kondor for treasury and capital markets and other pieces like Delta from Sopra” the COO said on a call. Hosting for the vast majority of IT systems meanwhile was from a “virtual data centre” based in France.
Hosting for all infrastructure will now be based out of OCI’s London region, with Oracle winning a RFP on cost and high availability metrics, the Bank of Africa UK COO told The Stack, adding that an existing relationship and security capabilities were also key to the win.
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OCI highlighted that the region is powered entirely by renewable energy, “helping the bank reach its goal of reducing energy consumption” across core operations. (Energy/emissions geeks who feel that “market-based” approach to reporting emissions and reliance on PPAs that allow cloud providers to show zero for all regions covered by renewable energy purchases irrespective of the carbon intensity of a region’s grid mix grid, look away…)
Bank of Africa UK Mohammed Anouar Kouhen added that “our strategy was that we wanted to scale our infrastructure with less providers and the best products and services for the customers we are targeting. We looked at the market carefully and went with Transact T24 from Temenos (for core banking.)”
The bank also uses Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP to “streamline its finance operations, automate processes and increase productivity and enhance financial decision making across the organisation” Oracle said.
The bank is something of a minnow in UK, with 10 IT staff in the UK and net operating income for its last reported annual year of £24.5 million, but has ambitions to expand its presence with the digital transformation key to driving that growth including building out a more mature online banking footprint for customers.
