Prema Varadhan

Walk us through your role at Temenos

As President of Product and COO of Temenos, I’m responsible for leading our Product and Technology teams to bring the innovation of the Temenos platform to a global customer base, working closely with customers to identify their challenges and keeping the Temenos product roadmap aligned with market demands.

I also lead Temenos Global Services and SaaS Engineering teams – improving delivery across Product, SaaS engineering and implementation – to drive operational excellence and accelerate the speed of delivery globally, which is a prerequisite for customer success in the SaaS world. 

What was your professional path to Temenos? 

I earned my degree in software engineering and left college wanting to use the programming skills that I’d learned. Temenos was just my second proper job out of college, and I was one of the very first developers for Temenos India. Although I didn’t have a background in banking, I was hungry to learn and made it my mission to understand as much as possible from my colleagues as soon as I joined. I haven’t looked back since.

What do you most enjoy about your role, and what are its biggest challenges? 

I enjoy creating great products that deliver value to our clients and their customers. I get huge satisfaction in improving a process that directly or indirectly helps a customer, regardless of how small or large that is, and anywhere across the banking ecosystem. 

Being the COO of a company, I can be challenged with solving operational problems within any part of our service and delivery. That’s the varied nature of my work across the different functions, but one that I relish.

Describe yourself in three words. 

Curious, caring, committed

How should banks evolve their back-end architecture? 

Many banks today run on legacy technology stacks with multiple core systems operating in silos and face massive challenges in core transformation because of the complexity of replacing the entire IT landscape. 

We recently launched Temenos Positions to address this problem, helping banks isolate different architectural elements, move off older back-end capabilities, and add new front-end capabilities in a smoother way. 

This new lean solution serves as a single source of truth for all real-time balances and funds authorisation data across the enterprise, regardless of the underlying technology. It means banks can address immediate operational efficiency needs and can also embark on a progressive modernisation journey without having to transform their entire core banking platform.

Taking advantage of an advanced API-driven, cloud-native architecture is also vital for banks to gain the agility and scalability they need to thrive in the modern digital era and future-proof their business. LEAP is a new holistic modernisation program, which enables our clients to move to the latest Temenos platform, accelerating their journey to the cloud and Software-as-a-Service.

And of course, AI is the game-changer that none of us can ignore. I believe responsible Gen AI solutions in core banking herald a new era of efficiency with the potential to revolutionise customer experiences, streamline processes and uncover actionable insights. 

Banks are naturally cautious in embracing Gen AI to the full and want to ensure they do so responsibly. Temenos has invested extensively in R&D to support our AI initiatives and an AI-infused platform that enables banks to deploy AI solutions and banking-specific capabilities faster and safer.

What are the benefits of public cloud migration?

Speed, security and business agility are key for banks to compete and thrive in the digital world and this is what cloud delivers. A recent Economist Impact survey for Temenos reveals that 51% of bankers anticipate that banks will no longer have traditional data centres within five years, favouring the agility and scalability of public cloud solutions. 

Bolstered by substantial investments from hyperscalers in security measures, banks are growing more confident in adopting public cloud services. We see large banks are prioritising the migration of digital banking and customer-facing channels, and core banking for secondary business lines and overseas operations. 

Mid-small banks are adopting public cloud and SaaS for primary business lines and domestic operations as well, while non-incumbents have a strong preference to start greenfield on SaaS.

What are the benefits of composable SaaS banking?

Composable banking services allow institutions to access the specific capabilities they need, precisely when they need them. With Temenos SaaS, these services include both pre-configured and pre-assembled banking capabilities, as well as optional integrated third-party solutions from the Temenos Exchange. By leveraging this approach, banks can bring new products to market faster, meeting the ever-growing expectations of their customers.

Temenos recently launched end-to-end SaaS services for retail, corporate and business banking offering pre-configured products, processes and APIs that a bank can use to turn on the new features with ease and accelerate their modernisation. This is an amazing accelerator for any bank, whether a start-up or established bank looking to launch products quickly.

How can cloud and SaaS help cut core banking software costs?

With SaaS, banks can focus on innovation and their customer, not managing their tech, while also keeping operational costs in check. They don’t need to worry about server provisioning, data centre maintenance, or hardware upgrades. Temenos manages the infrastructure, reducing operational overhead.

SaaS solutions can be deployed quickly, allowing banks to launch new services faster. This agility translates to cost savings by accelerating time-to-market. Temenos ensures that SaaS clients always have access to the latest software versions. This eliminates the need for manual upgrades and reduces the risk of running outdated systems.

In what ways is cloud banking environmentally friendly?

Compliance with climate regulations and meeting environmental targets have joined the growing list of reasons why banks are accelerating the shift to the cloud. It is estimated that cloud banking platforms offer users a 95% lower carbon footprint compared to on-premise alternatives and Temenos is by far the most sustainable way to run core banking in the cloud.

Over the years we’ve worked hard investing considerable R&D to get the best out of the cloud with a platform and solutions that are fully cloud-native. We’ve also reduced the carbon impact of our software by over 50% from a 2021 baseline. Improving the performance with more efficient code and leaner architecture means less demand for infrastructure, less processing power needed and so less energy consumed and lower carbon emissions. 

Combined with the sustainability of hyper-scaler partners, this brings added environmental benefits for banks choosing to deploy our solutions on public cloud or as SaaS.

To read the full story in the magazine click HERE

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