Two of Australia’s newest digital banks are leveraging Microsoft Azure to adopt mission critical banking platforms, through a partnership with independent software vendor (ISV) Temenos.

Revealed ahead of SIBOS in Sydney – an annual banking and finance conference – Temenos is working with Judo Capital and Volt Bank to deploy its core banking platform T24, to future proof service offerings.

As a result, Judo Capital has maximised the capabilities of Temenos to tap into an API-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) operating model.

Such an approach using T24 for core banking – alongside the underlying Microsoft Azure identity management capabilities – has allowed the business to develop tools like single sign-on, big data analytics, machine learning, as well as tackle financial crime investigation without compromising security.

Meanwhile, cloud-native Volt Bank has become Temenos’ first customer in the region to be hosted on Azure, in addition to leveraging business analytics, productivity and collaboration tools.

Specifically, the digital bank leverages Power BI, Office 365 and Visual Studio Team Services, with plans in place to deepen the alliance in the months ahead.

More than 3,000 firms worldwide, including 41 of the top 50 banks, currently rely on Temenos software to process the daily transactions of more than 500 million banking customers.

According to Ross Mallace – head of cloud across Asia Pacific at Temenos – the ISV now has 28 regional cloud customers, and has signed four major deals this year with “more in the pipeline”.

“Whether you’re a start-up looking to launch, and looking to launch with a particular product offering, say term deposits, this solution can manage that,” Mallace said.

“But as you grow your business, in two, three, four years you might want to branch into loans, mortgages and other things, and will you know our software can do it.”

Mallace said Temenos’ “significant R&D investment” means that enhancements are instantly available to cloud users, while processing capability and geographic reach is addressed by the Azure foundations which stretch internationally.

“We have examples of very, very quick implementations,” Mallace added. “I’m talking two months in parts of the world, especially for neobanks which have no legacy systems.”