Insights from Money20/20 USA: Progressive Modernisation with Temenos

At Money20/20 USA, Temenos outlined a clear vision for the future of banking: progressive modernisation. Through cloud adoption, composable architecture, and real-time data capabilities, Temenos is pushing banks to modernise without disruption while preparing for AI-driven competition.

Money20/20 USA continues to be the global stage where the future of finance takes shape. Leaders from across banking, fintech, and technology gather not just to showcase new products, but to set the tone for what financial innovation will look like over the next decade. This year, Temenos—one of the world’s major banking software providers—took the spotlight with a perspective that feels both ambitious and grounded in reality: progressive modernisation.

While the industry often gravitates toward buzzwords, Temenos focused on something every bank understands deeply—the need to modernise without breaking what already works. Banks don’t want disruption; they want transformation that’s controlled, modular, and strategically aligned. At Money20/20, Temenos made it clear: the future of banking is neither a full rip-and-replace nor a slow crawl. It’s a composable evolution.

A Banking Market Under Pressure to Transform

The conversations at Money20/20 USA echoed a shared concern: the financial sector is standing at an inflection point. Amid rising competition, constantly evolving regulation, and escalating customer expectations, banks can no longer afford outdated systems.

The pressures are coming from all directions:

  • Fintech challengers are redefining customer experiences with lightning-fast onboarding, instant payments, and 24/7 digital services.
  • Tech giants are entering finance with enormous data advantages.
  • Customers expect seamless, app-driven interactions supported by real-time insights.
  • Regulators are pushing for transparency, risk management, and data standardisation.

Legacy systems—once stable pillars of bank operations—have now become obstacles. They are expensive to maintain, slow to adapt, and resistant to innovation. And this is exactly where Temenos’s view of progressive modernisation comes into play.

Temenos’s Core Message: Modernise in Steps, Not in Chaos

Instead of promoting disruptive overhauls, Temenos emphasised a strategy that balances transformation with stability. Progressive modernisation means upgrading the core banking landscape in layers, using cloud technologies, API-driven architecture, and modular components.

According to insights shared at Money20/20, banks are shifting away from monolithic platforms and moving toward a composable banking approach. Temenos explained that this allows institutions to modernise functions such as onboarding, payments, lending, or risk modules independently—without touching the entire core.

The pillars of Temenos’s progressive modernisation approach include:

  • Open APIs: enabling banks to integrate new tech partners without rebuilding architecture.
  • Cloud-native deployment: increasing scalability while reducing operational costs.
  • Real-time data capabilities: supporting faster decision-making and personalisation.
  • AI-ready infrastructure: preparing banks for next-gen automation and analytics.
  • Modular functionality: allowing upgrades in parts instead of full-system replacements.

This is not just a technical strategy—it’s a business strategy designed to protect banks from the risks of abrupt migration.

Why Temenos Believes Composable Banking Is the Future

One of the standout themes at the event was the shift from traditional modular systems to composable architectures. Temenos argued that composability is more than convenience—it’s a competitive requirement.

Banks want to act fast, but they also want control. Composable banking gives them exactly that.

Benefits highlighted by Temenos include:

  • Incremental improvements without downtime
  • Rapid innovation cycles driven by plug-and-play components
  • Better regulatory compliance through real-time data management
  • Enhanced customer experiences through personalised digital journeys
  • Operational resilience with cloud-based redundancy

Instead of replacing the engine mid-flight, banks can add new capabilities, strengthen performance, and optimise user experience—all while staying airborne.

Cloud Adoption: The Biggest Driver Behind Progressive Modernisation

Temenos made one point abundantly clear: the cloud is the non-negotiable backbone of banking’s future. As regulations evolve and financial institutions embrace scale and security, cloud adoption is becoming mainstream.

At Money20/20, Temenos highlighted the transformational role of cloud-native banking platforms in three ways:

1. Cost Efficiency

Banks can drastically reduce their infrastructure spend by shifting to the cloud, replacing heavy legacy hardware with flexible, on-demand computing.

2. Real-Time Speed

With cloud support, data flows faster, processes automate seamlessly, and customer interactions become more intuitive.

3. Global Scalability

Cloud-native systems help banks expand to new regions, launch new services, and adopt new innovations without starting from scratch.

Temenos also pointed out that cloud adoption is no longer only for digital banks. Large traditional institutions are now migrating mission-critical workloads as cloud security, governance, and compliance have matured.

AI: The Next Strategic Layer Temenos Pushes Banks Toward

While many discussions at Money20/20 focused on generative AI, Temenos adopted a pragmatic stance: AI is only as powerful as the data layer beneath it.

Banks that want to harness AI for risk scoring, fraud detection, personalised banking, or predictive analytics must first modernise their data infrastructure. This aligns with Temenos’s progressive approach — get the foundation right before scaling intelligence.

AI opportunities highlighted include:

  • Real-time risk monitoring
  • Customer behaviour prediction
  • Increased automation in lending workflows
  • Fraud analysis with enriched data signals
  • Personalised product offerings at scale

Temenos positioned AI not as a buzzword, but as a capability that must be built deliberately and gradually.

Temenos’s Final Message: Modernisation Is a Journey, Not a Migration

The overarching message at Money20/20 USA was simple yet strategic:
Banks don’t need to modernise everything today. They need to modernise the right things first.

By advocating progressive modernisation, Temenos gives banks a framework that is safer, faster, and more aligned with long-term transformation goals.

The company concluded with a future-forward perspective: the banks that will win the next era are those with flexible infrastructure, real-time data intelligence, and the ability to adapt without shutting down operations.

Essentially, Temenos wants banks to evolve—not explode.