Temenos takes explainable AI product global

The Switzerland-based banking software provider will roll out globally the explainable AI (XAI) product Temenos Virtual COO, which it initially unveiled in March as a collaboration with Canadian Western Bank (CWB). The product is built on Temenos’ omnichannel offering, Temenos Infinity, with an XAI component geared toward small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Temenos Virtual COO helps companies make financial decisions by modeling different business scenarios; aggregates data to give overviews of companies’ financial health; and cuts their administrative workloads.

Temenos Virtual COO shows how AI can streamline banks’ back-office functions. Financial institutions increasingly are turning to AI solutions, per Insider Intelligence's 2020 AI in Banking report. Other initiatives include:

• BNY Mellon’s AI-driven email-sorting solution sends inbound emails to its most relevant departments. Human involvement is kept to a minimum in the process, which US-based BNY Mellon adopted for its operations team in 2019. The bank attributes savings of “hundreds of hours” to AI and estimates a 90% accuracy rate.
• Santander Consumer Bank has been piloting Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the Nordic region since 2019 to process account activity. The Spain-based banking giant reported in July 2020 that the pilot saved 30,000 man hours in 2019, along with more than $2 million. The RPA pilot utilized 150 intelligent bots, offered by Automation Anywhere, to automate tasks such as loan processing.

XAI-based offerings enable banks to automate complex day-to-day operations. Temenos Virtual COO marks the company’s latest product to include XAI—following last year’s mid-pandemic rollout of XAI models that help banks with their lending processes for SMBs. Both products give Temenos’ banking clients XAI-based options for automating complicated tasks for SMBs, including responding to growth opportunities and assembling comprehensive financial pictures. Temenos’ decision to offer its Virtual COO globally signals that it’s been successful in its initial CWB collaboration—and it may also resonate with other financial institutions.