This article first appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of The Record.
Temenos Screen is a new enterprise solution available to customers as an app running in the Microsoft cloud. The technology – which allows financial services institutions to screen and accurately profile their customers and all types of transactions on watch lists – aims to transform the efficacy of reducing financial crime.
It has been available to customers as an on-premise solution for some time, but Carr Phillips, Microsoft’s global industry director of Services Industries, says that the fact it is now available from the Microsoft cloud is an exciting development. “By moving Temenos’ Screen solution to the cloud, we are able to roll it out to a bank much faster,” he says. “It is also much easier to update.”
Temenos’ partnership with Microsoft goes back many years. “We have been working with Microsoft Azure since 2011, when together we became the first providers to put core banking in the cloud,” explains Adam Gable, product director of Financial Crime and Treasury at Temenos. “By offering Temenos solutions in the cloud, we are enabling financial organisations to operate with lower costs and more flexibility and, by extension, helping them to deliver financial services quickly without the complexity and expense of in-house IT systems.”
Temenos currently has two financial crime solutions available on Azure: Screen and Profile (an advanced anti-money laundering solution). “Screen is also available through the Microsoft AppSource platform, where we offer the chance to experience three free trial experiences (Transaction Alert Manager, Watch List Manager and Knowledge Manager),” adds Gable.
Making Screen available via the AppSource portal is part of Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to partner with industry experts and bring proven solutions to customers via the cloud. “What we’re doing at the moment is identifying specific business processes and making trusted solutions available to them via our secure cloud,” Phillips explains.
Compared to traditional sanction screening technologies, Screen has a few standout attributes. “It is highly automated, which means that the cost of screening transactions is reduced and overall operational efficiency is enhanced,” Gable says. “Through this automation and accurate profiling, Screen has an extremely low false positive rate, which means high straight through processing. It can also discover internal misbehaviour like stripping relevant information out of transactions (an issue encountered previously, which has led to heavy fines being incurred by banks). In addition, it is able to detect politically exposed persons within customer databases, which may have slipped through manual Know Your Customer checks.”
Now available through the Microsoft Cloud, Screen offers businesses a host of extra benefits. “The speed, scalability and flexibility of the cloud enables banks to maximise the efficiency of their transaction screening and grow limitlessly,” Phillips explains, adding that the solution can easily integrate with a bank’s existing software. “Microsoft’s cloud is the world’s largest hyperscale solution, used by 90% of the Fortune 500. By moving solutions like Temenos Screen to our compliant, secure environment, we are able to offer industry-leading technologies to our customers in the most cost-effective and reliable manner.”