Success Stories

Launching Ethiopia’s first

100% digital banking
services, helping
underserved communities
access loans, deposits and
more

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

WAT C H V I D E O

At a Glance
• Achieves first-mover advantage
with the first fully digital banking
services in Ethiopia

• 1,000+ new accounts opened

each day, helping to increase
financial Cookies Settings
inclusion
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• Takes seconds to process and

approve loans applications,
 rather than months previously

Established in 1996, Bank of Abyssinia is currently the largest privately held

bank in Ethiopia, and plans to become the leading commercial bank in East
Africa by 2030. To reach this milestone, the bank is on a mission to grow its
customer base, boosting financial inclusion in the country and beyond.

03:04

Helping more Ethiopians access banking

services
According to the National Bank of Ethiopia, 75 percent of Ethiopians don’t
have a bank account and up to 40 percent of all bank branches in the
country are located near to the capital. For many years, banks have
struggled to expand their reach beyond urban centers as setting up and
running branches in rural locations involves significant upfront capital
expenditure and high operational costs.

However, market conditions are rapidly changing in Ethiopia, as more people

gain regular and reliable access to the internet. Bank of Abyssinia identified
an cookies
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Addis Tadesse, Director for Application Management
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at Bank of Abyssinia,
explains: “We’ve offered digital banking services for many years, but most of
these services still required our customers to visit a branch at some stage –
for instance, to bring identification to open new accounts. Also, some
 processes such as loan applications required in-person consultations. If we
could make the experience completely digital, we would be able to reach
underserved communities in remote areas and dramatically increase our
market share.”

With no other bank in Ethiopia offering a fully digital service, Bank of

Abyssinia decided to pioneer the new approach and searched for a
technology partner to support its initiative. Crucially, the bank targeted a
solution provider that would help it deliver a truly seamless digital
experience and ensure that it could meet strict regulatory requirements for
new digital banks set by the National Bank of Ethiopia.

Finding the perfect solution

Bank of Abyssinia decided to build 100 percent digital banking services with
Temenos. At the same time, the bank chose to upgrade its Temenos core
banking system to ensure that it could provide customers with the very
latest innovations in both digital and in-branch banking.

“We’ve used Temenos core banking for over 10 years and

throughout that time we’ve seen how reliable, scalable and
robust Temenos solutions are. For example, Temenos core
banking has been easy to customize, and provides real-time
reports that enable us to track the overall financial
performance and efficiency of the bank. These in-depth
insights help our executive leadership to make smarter
operational decisions.”
Addis Tadesse, Director for Application Management at Bank of
Abyssinia

Protecting against fraud

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As the first bank in Ethiopia to launch entirely digital services, Bank of
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Abyssinia
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criminals. To safeguard against this risk, Bank of Abyssinia also
decided to implement Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation—equipping the
bank with the tools to spot and prevent illicit activity in near real-time.
 “When your only interaction with new customers is online, it’s
vital that you can verify their identity from the moment they
sign up. With Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation, we can
identify potential fraudsters and immediately prevent them
from making transactions. And because Temenos digital
banking is built with open banking in mind, we can easily
integrate third-party identity solutions to support our Know-
Your-Customer activities.”
Addis Tadesse, Director for Application Management at Bank of
Abyssinia

Deepening partnerships
To achieve a rapid implementation, Bank of Abyssinia enlisted the support of
Temenos business partner Xpert Digital to deploy Temenos digital banking,
including the setup of an API integration with Idemia—the bank’s identity
and security solution. Supported by Temenos and Xpert Digital, Temenos
digital banking went live in just four months.

“Xpert Digital played a lead role in helping us design a digital banking

ecosystem that is secure, reliable and, crucially, easy to use,” comments
Addis Tadesse. “The Xpert Digital team went the extra mile by helping us to
redesign key workflows for a completely digital environment incorporating
best practices. For instance, they helped us to leverage integrations with
Idemia to build efficient, highly secure and automated verification
processes—allowing us to onboard customers rapidly and with confidence.”

Welcoming new digital customers

By building and launching end-to-end digital banking services with Temenos
core and digital banking platforms, Bank of Abyssinia has significantly
increased its customer base.
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Addis Tadesse. “Today, through
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our Apollo service, customers can sign up for an account from their mobiles
by submitting a video of themselves and a copy of their national identity
card. With Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation and Idemia, we can run
 verification processes quickly and get new customers up and running with
their new bank account within one day.”

“We’re impressed with the growth we have seen since we

implemented Temenos digital banking. We are seeing up to
1,000 new accounts opened every day, and the majority of
these are via our digital banking channel—and we expect this
number to increase in the months ahead.”
Addis Tadesse, Director for Application Management at Bank of
Abyssinia

Empowering more people to invest in their

future
As well as offering digital account management services, Bank of Abyssinia
enables customers to apply for loans via its mobile banking app—helping
more people to access credit, as Addis Tadesse adds: “With Temenos digital
banking, we can approve the loan and give our customer to their funds
within a few seconds, as long as they meet our lending criteria, where
previously this would take months.”

He concludes: “With Temenos, we’ve been able to bring a game-changing

solution to the Ethiopian banking sector and empower our customers to
bank with us confidently at any time and from any location. We look forward
to strengthening our partnership with Temenos in the years ahead as we
continue to develop our digital banking offerings and help more customers
manage their money effectively.”

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social mediaAmbassador Awards 2023
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Abyssinia as one of the winners of
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the Innovation Hero Awards for
deploying an innovative and
 impactful project, using a Temenos
solution.

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We partnered successfully with

Xpert Digital (XD) is a Certified Temenos Services Partner specializing in delivering

exceptional digital experiences by creatively nurturing innovation with technology.

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Region Solutions

Middle East & Africa Core Banking

Digital Front Office
Financial Crime Mitigation

Sector

Business Banking (SMEs)

Corporate
Retail
Universal

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