INLAKS Computers has announced the deployment and successful implementation of Temenos T24 to all the branches of Afribank Nigeria Plc nationwide.
Afribank, one of Nigeria’s 23 retail banking institutions, went ‘live’ on Temenos T24 and is now the second retail bank with over 200 branches that has successfully gone live on T24.
The implementation was based on a total redesign of the bank’s process. It also saw the head office functions i.e. treasury, trade finance, and corporate lending which hitherto were semi-automated, now completely automated under the new implementation.  The bank converted to multi-books from multi-company.  A new account structure base on Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) directive of common account structure – Nuban was implemented.
Afribank has been a Temenos client since 2001 when it implemented Globus. Series of upgrades has seen the bank stagnated on Globus G13 on Universe.
The unprecedented changes resulting from the post banking consolidation in Nigeria put so much pressure on the Globus G13, that the bank required several customizations.  The bank, in its response to regulatory requirements and the introduction of diverse electronic banking products, initially resisted an upgrade but decided to a search and re-evaluate her options..
Before the search started Atos-Origin consultants were engaged for the bank’s business strategy and to redesign the bank’s processes to deliver on the strategy. With the strategy completed, Afriban invited three leading applications: Finacle, Flexcube and Temenos T24 for evaluation between 2008/2009.  The bank’s tender included the need for the banking system to meet functional requirements of its operations treasury, asset management, trade finance, corporate lending and leasing, consumer finance, retail functionalities, cross border payments and various e-channels like internet banking, card payments and ATM.
Other requirements of the bank included: the vendor’s SOA Strategy, demonstrable support capabilities and the architecture of the solution to provide fault tolerance and resilience towards achieving a true 24/7 processing.
The cutting edge for Temenos that made it the first choice at the end of the evaluation were: the breadth and depth of functionalities which T24 provide within an integrated system;  the new Temenos Insight product – its versatility to meet the bank’s management, risk and regulatory requirements was an added advantage, a clear demonstration of the non-stop capability within T24.
Other reason that tilted the decision to Temenos T24 was long standing relationship between the Client and Inlaks Computers (Temenos Partner) which predated the selection of Temenos.
According to Mr. Victor Oladapo, head of information technology in the bank, the implementation has been a huge success. “There has not been any major issue that the normal helpdesk support has not turned around within 24 hours,” he said. “Most issues logged thinned out by the third day.
 The system was tuned to the extent that by the seventh day of go-live, the bank was able to gain faster system response time.”
According to Mr. Tunji Agbaje, director for implementation and services, Inlaks Computers, the successful deployment of Temenos T24 underscores the new service orientation philosophy of Inlaks and its commitment to deliver value to the client.  He is optimistic that the market would begin to hold to these realities and favourably take good advantage of deploying one of the best leading industry applications.
Agbaje said the immediate gains from the system include: quick services delivery and 24/7 availability of the electronic channels. “The complete automation of the treasury, trade finance and head office functions means that transaction would be faster and therefore as a defining opportunity for Afribank to leverage on its technological advantages, moreso at a time the bank is also planning to recapitalize and seeking core strategic partnership with the right investor,” he said.
With the old Globus, the bank could boast as one of the least running cost data centre in the market. This is derived from a single software with breadth and depth of functionalities and with flexibility to meet its business process as it evolves.
The implementation methodologies employed, according to agbaje, was the Temenos new implementation methodology which is the process led implementation methodology based on Model Bank approach. “Inlaks has developed regional and country layer tools based on previous implementation which were readily available to speed up implementation,” he said.
The success factors to going ‘live’ as planned, he said, was total commitment from the project sponsors, Mr. Nebolisa Arah, chief executive officer of the bank Mr. Stephen Adaji, executive director, IT and Operations.