The Asian Bankers Association (ABA) and Temenos, an ABA Associate Member, successfully held webinar on Moving Banking to SaaS held at 2PM Taipei time on May 29, 2025.
The 60-minute session featured Zannettos Zannettou, Business Solution Manager, who discussed how SaaS can reduce a bank’s operational frictions. Connie Leung, Senior Director, Regional Industry Leader - Asia at Microsoft joined Mr. Zannettos during the fire chat section of the webinar to further elaborate on the applicability of the solution, while Mr. Rajan S. Narayan, Cyberbeat CEO moderated the session. We would like to present you the summary of the session as follows:
Summary
(1) Opening Remarks by Rajan Najaran
Mr. Najaran opened the session by highlighting the growing shift of banks of all sizes to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms like Temenos Banking Cloud. He emphasized the benefits of SaaS in delivering greater speed to market and agility. Mr. Narayan introduced the feature speaker Mr. Zannettou, noting his 25 years of experience in banking software and his leadership in pre-sales technology in the Asia-Pacific region.
(2) Main Presentation by Zannettos Zannettou
Mr. Zannettou began his presentation by outlining the Temenos SaaS Cloud Service, built around three main pillars: default deployment on Microsoft Azure’s public cloud, rich and extensible banking functionality developed over three decades, and a fully managed IT operations model. This includes proactive monitoring, automatic updates to keep systems evergreen, and services backed by strong SLAs. The platform supports both small and large banks with the same core technology stack and is already in production across over 30 regulatory jurisdictions globally.
He emphasized that Temenos assumes much of the operational responsibility—such as cloud provisioning, continuous security monitoring, and compliance support—enabling banks to focus on customer experience and innovation. The SaaS model includes 24/7 cloud and security operations centers, high availability and disaster recovery features, and a shared responsibility model for data security. Banks retain full control over data and user access, while Temenos ensures the underlying infrastructure and services meet international standards and certifications.
Mr. Zannettos also detailed the global reach and maturity of the platform, noting its 14+ year SaaS track record and significant metrics, such as 190+ million customer accounts, 2.5+ billion USD in payments processed, and 99.96% service availability. He highlighted the uniformity of service across clients through standardized terms, comprehensive documentation, and the Temenos Trust Center portal that provides up-to-date certifications and compliance reports. This approach simplifies regulatory engagement for banks, making it easier to adopt and operate SaaS-based core banking solutions.
To illustrate real-world impact, Mr. Zannettos shared two customer success stories. Alex Bank in Australia leveraged Temenos SaaS for corporate banking, achieving improved customer retention and operational agility. A digital lender in Malaysia rapidly launched its platform using Temenos SaaS during the pandemic, benefiting from low costs, high scalability, and fast time-to-market. He concluded by emphasizing the platform’s built-in ESG capabilities, including carbon footprint optimization, and reaffirmed Temenos’ commitment to secure, sustainable, and regulated SaaS delivery across global markets.
Key Takeaways
- Temenos SaaS significantly reduces banks' operational burden by offering a fully managed, evergreen, secure cloud platform deployed on Microsoft Azure.
- Regulatory compliance is streamlined through standardized processes, certifications, and a centralized Trust Center that provides up-to-date documentation for regulators.
- Banks benefit from scalability, faster time-to-market, and ESG alignment, enabling innovation without compromising on security or performance.
(3) Fireside chat Discussion
During the fireside chat moderated by Mr. Naraya, Mr. Zannettou and Ms Leung explored how SaaS and cloud services are transforming the banking sector amid intensifying market pressures and regulatory expectations. Ms. Leung began by outlining the pressing challenges facing banks today, including macroeconomic volatility, growing cybersecurity threats, rapid digitization, and increasing regulatory demands.
She emphasized that cloud technology—particularly when combined with data analytics and generative AI—has become a key enabler for banks to reduce costs, scale operations, and personalize customer experiences. Microsoft’s Azure platform, in collaboration with partners like Temenos, offers not just infrastructure but a compliant, secure, and adaptable foundation to modernize banking operations. She underscored that financial services are now among the leading adopters of generative AI, with practical use cases such as virtual assistants, fraud detection, and productivity tools driving rapid returns on investment.
Mr. Zannettos added that despite the benefits, banks still express concerns when evaluating SaaS solutions, such as data residency, regulatory approvals, and perceived loss of IT control. However, these concerns are increasingly outdated. Regulators across regions have become more supportive of cloud adoption, and providers like Temenos work closely with clients to align with local compliance standards. He explained that SaaS adoption offers banks quicker time-to-market, operational scalability, and relief from infrastructure maintenance—freeing up internal IT resources to focus on innovation.
Temenos has also embedded AI capabilities into its SaaS platform, allowing banks to accelerate transformation through explainable AI for credit decisions and generative AI for user support and documentation. Both speakers stressed the importance of internal alignment: engaging compliance, risk, and IT teams early in the transformation journey and ensuring a strong focus on change management and cultural readiness.
In conclusion, the speakers offered strategic advice for banks embarking on core modernization. Mr. Zannettos urged institutions to proactively engage regulators early in the process to avoid delays and build trust. Ms. Leung emphasized the need for holistic change management, noting that successful digital transformation hinges not just on technology but on people, processes, and leadership commitment to long-term outcomes.
The discussion wrapped up with audience questions on implementation timelines, SaaS cost models, and data governance, all of which reaffirmed the growing maturity and readiness of SaaS offerings for banks of all sizes.
Key Takeaways:
- Start regulatory engagement early to streamline approvals and build confidence.
- Focus on change management to align technology adoption with cultural and process transformation.
- Leverage AI and cloud to reduce cost, enhance agility, and improve customer and employee experiences.
The presentation files was distributed only to ABA members.
The video recording of the webinar is available for viewing at the ABA YouTube HERE.
