Stanbic Holdings Plc, Kenya’s sixth-largest financial institution with a market capitalisation of KES 49.14 billion ($381 million), has finalised an improve of its core banking software, Temenos 24 (T24 R23). 

Final week, the financial institution knowledgeable its over 266,000 prospects of service disruption throughout its banking channels between October 19 and 21 as a result of improve. On October 23, 5 prospects informed TechCabal they couldn’t entry their accounts or make transfers after the mentioned deadline.

Temenos 24  is utilized by over 950 banks worldwide, together with Kenya Industrial Financial institution (KCB), primarily for retail, enterprise, company, and wealth administration. The applying, owned by Swiss firm Temenos, was upgraded in partnership with US-based Orion Innovation, a digital transformation specialist, Stanbic mentioned. 

“Now we have upgraded from T24 R17 to T24 R23. R23 is the most recent launch, and we’re among the many first banks to improve globally,” Stanbic informed TechCabal in a press release. 

Whereas the present improve has been essentially the most impactful with strong safety features, Stanbic started upgrading its core banking platform in early 2024, two banking executives informed TechCabal. Temenos was upgraded to model R17 in Could 2024, including cloud-based digital banking options. 

“We proceed to observe the system for any incidences and to make sure that it’s acting at an optimum degree,” the financial institution mentioned. 

The disruptions present the complexity of upgrading core banking techniques, which has compelled Kenyan banks to spend money on new expertise to handle technical points. In 2023, NCBA, a tier-1 financial institution with a  market cap of KES 72.9 billion ($565 million), elevated its IT workers prices by 30% as competitors for expertise amongst banks, telcos, and large tech firms heats up. Fairness Financial institution additionally reported that its workers prices had gone up by 32% after sinking in additional assets within the tech departments. 

“Kenyan banks are aggressively hiring techies and knowledge scientists,” one mid-level financial institution government who requested to not be named informed TechCabal. 

Growing an in-house core banking platform permits banks to have better management over customisation and knowledge safety, a supervisor at a rival financial institution informed TechCabal. Nevertheless, it can be pricey and cumbersome, the identical supervisor mentioned, so banks, like Stanbic, select to outsource core purposes for entry to experience and price effectivity. 

“Integrations are complicated as a result of outdated applied sciences of many banks. There are additionally circumstances of managing a number of stakeholders in a financial institution whose differing priorities can delay upgrades,” a financial institution supervisor informed TechCabal.