Banks know that legacy systems hold them back, constraining product development, innovation, real-time data access and AI adoption. The harder question is how to modernise without creating unacceptable operational risk.
Temenos wins the award for the world’s best core banking solution precisely because of its ability to turn impressive scale into product investment, client co-development and practical, dependable, delivery. “The conversation is no longer about why you need to modernise,” says Sai Rangachari, Temenos’ chief product officer. “It is now about how to modernise, and what the pathways are.”
Those pathways differ by segment and geography. In emerging markets, Temenos continues to see demand from tier 3, tier 4 and tier 5 banks replacing older universal banking systems, in-house platforms or second-generation core systems. William Moroney, Temenos’ chief revenue officer, points to Brazil, Panama and Vietnam as examples of markets where demand remains strong.
“This is a lot of where Temenos grew out of, emerging market, universal banking, core modernisation,” says Moroney. “We have seen a lot of activity in new logos in there.”
At larger banks, the picture is different. Tier 1 institutions are more likely to have complex multi-core environments, siloed data and high-risk legacy estates. Their interest is increasingly in consolidation, progressive modernisation and open platforms that can support AI, real-time decision making and cross-market standardisation.
From core replacement to progressive modernisation
This is where Temenos’ composable core strategy matters. Core banking vendors have long promised transformation, but large banks are often unwilling to replace an entire core in one move. Temenos’ 2025 product work was aimed at giving banks smaller, more controlled options.
Rangachari describes three forms of modernisation that clients are asking for: the first is re-architecture, including demand for composable thin ledgers and unified ledger models. Then it is about progressive modernisation, where a bank may choose to modernise lending or another core domain without replacing everything else. Finally, come adjacent point solutions around areas such as payments and lending, which sit close to the core but can be upgraded on a different path.
We have seen an explosion of rails, an explosion of different ways to channel payments and move money across banks
William Moroney
“From a client perspective, it is all about risk mitigation during upgrades,” says Rangachari. “They want continuity. Instead of replacing the entire core, can we just replace deposits, give you confidence, lower risk and faster time to value?”
Temenos made both retail and corporate composable core banking solutions available in 2025, aimed particularly at tier 1 and tier 2 banks in major markets. It also launched more than 10 new licensable core products, including retail loyalty and savings tools and corporate banking capabilities such as supply chain finance.
The thin-ledger work is one of the more important architectural developments. Rangachari describes it as stripping the ledger back to its essential function. “There is no pricing, there is no product manager,” he says. “And it is optimised for TPS, storage and transmission.”
Building with banks, not just for them
Temenos also changed how it develops products. Its Design Partner Program, launched in 2025, was created to bring clients into the product development process much earlier.
Rangachari is direct about the principle behind it. “Do not build in a silo. Validate with customers,” he says. “This is critical because we are building to solve the problems.”
The programme brings together internal product priorities and customer pain points. Temenos then uses workshops, 90-day sprints, bi-weekly touchpoints, pilot phases and early access to move from concept to productisation. Temenos Copilot for Core, a gen AI assistant that gives product, IT and customer service managers a conversational way to explore core banking functionality and data insights, was developed with Banque Internationale à Luxembourg and a large regional bank in the US.
The company co-developed or launched three market-ready solutions with more than 10 clients in 2025 through the Design Partner Program. Its 2026 pipeline includes AI Digital, copilot persona expansion, AI agents for tier 1 wealth clients, composable thin ledger, FCM AI Agent, composable core modules and Temenos Copilot for Core.
Do not build in a silo. Validate with customers. This is critical because we are building to solve the problems
Sai Rangachari
AI was a major part of Temenos’ 2025 product strategy, with many tangible use cases. Copilot for Core’s aim is to make product design, configuration and analysis easier for bank staff who do not necessarily know every parameter or dependency inside the core system.
Its financial crime mitigation work is another credible use case. Temenos launched an FCM AI Agent for sanctions screening, co-created with a European tier 1 bank. Live deployments show false-positive rates below 2%, compared with 5% to 8% in legacy screening systems.
Beyond efficiency, banking compliance needs AI to provide explainability, auditability and human control. Rangachari says the agent operates across observer, human-in-the-loop and fully autonomous modes, although he adds that “nobody is ready for fully autonomous right now”.
Temenos frames AI across product, process and people. Product examples include Copilot for Core and the FCM AI Agent. Process examples include AI in software development and customer support. The company has also launched T-Guru, a gen AI assistant for support queries with more than 1,500 client and partner users.
An explosion of rails
Payments was one of the clearest areas of demand in 2025. “We have seen an explosion of rails, an explosion of different ways to channel payments and move money across banks,” says Moroney. “Banks want to bring the ability to make that decision into the system. That is what a payment hub does.”
That is reflected in Temenos’ launch of Money Movement & Management, an AI-powered and pre-integrated platform covering payments, accounts, risk and treasury modules. The platform is designed to reduce fragmented payments architecture, improve straight-through processing and support onboarding of alternative payment networks. FINCI, the Lithuanian electronic money institution, went live on the platform in four months and said it could onboard new payment providers in weeks and process thousands of payment requests a second.
Execution supports product strategy
Temenos also had a strong year operationally. Its product revenue grew 11% year-on-year, above the company’s stated market growth rate of 7%. Annual recurring revenue rose 12%.
Delivery remains a critical issue in core banking. It reported 316 customer go-lives in 2025. Temenos reorganised sales, delivery, partners, local support and customer success under one chief revenue officer organisation in 2025. It also moved towards a hybrid delivery model, combining partner scale with Temenos governance and specialist expertise. Moroney says the company has around 700 internal consultants and 7,000 certified consultants in partner organisations but now insists on a Temenos “spine team” even where a partner is running the implementation.
VPBank in Vietnam shows why delivery capability matters. A Temenos client since 2006, it completed one of the country’s largest core upgrades in 2025, migrating more than 18 million customer accounts and millions of loan records. The upgraded platform now handles twice the daily volume, with 30% faster business processing speeds and a 40% increase in payment transaction volumes. The bank can serve twice the volume with better quality.
Core banking is one of the hardest categories in financial technology because the product must satisfy conflicting demands. It must be broad but modular, stable but adaptable, localised but globally consistent, cloud-ready but deployable in different regulatory environments, and innovative without putting the bank at risk.
Temenos stood out because it addressed those tensions better than competitors in 2025. Its proposition is a set of modernisation routes: full core replacement for banks ready to move, composable modules for banks that need to progress in stages, point solutions for adjacent needs, AI embedded into operational workflows and a delivery model built around a large partner ecosystem with strong Temenos oversight.
That combination of scale, architecture, product execution and client evidence makes Temenos the world’s best core banking solution for 2026.
