Saudi Arabia Tourism Development Fund goes live with digital lending service on Temenos

By Leandra Monteiro

Temenos, the banking software company, announced that Saudi Arabia’s Tourism Development Fund (TDF) has gone live with a digital lending service on Temenos in just 60 days. The new service provides investors and businesses in the tourism sector with rapid access to financing solutions from TDF. The SAR 15 billion fund was established to enable private sector tourism investments and develop the tourism sector as part of plans to diversify the Saudi economy.

The solution is powered by cloud-native Temenos Infinity digital banking platform and Temenos Transact next-generation core on the Oracle Cloud datacenter in Saudi Arabia. With Temenos’ ready-to-go features, modern microservices architecture, and a low-code environment, TDF benefits from speed, agility, and rapid time-to-market. With support from local implementation partner NdcTech, TDF was able to build and launch incrementally, going live with the first phase of the digital service in just two months.

TDF provides tailored financing solutions for investors in the tourism sector with attractive financing rates. Leveraging the pre-built country-specific functions and integration of Temenos Infinity helped the Fund to shorten implementation timelines.

Tourism is one of the main pillars of Saudi economic reforms. The country has opened up to international tourists and foreign investors and hopes the sector will contribute more than 10% of gross domestic product by 2030, up from 3% currently.

Qusai Al Fakhri, CEO, Tourism Development Fund commented, “With Temenos, we have been able to build a greenfield digital service to serve our investors in record time. The first phase of the project was live within 60 days, and funding is already beginning to flow to tourism projects across the Kingdom. The Tourism Development Fund has a vital role to play in driving the growth of KSA’s tourism sector and in the diversification of our economy. Therefore, it was essential to have a technology partner that shared our vision and ambition. Temenos was the obvious choice. It is the global leader in banking technology with an agile platform and deep expertise that enables us to build rapidly and scale.”

Yasser Alkhathlan, Executive Director – Business Technology, Tourism Development Fund added, “Temenos has an unmatched reputation in digital banking with many successful projects with financial institutions and lenders in the region. This deep experience and expertise was key to the rapid go live with TDF. With Temenos, we have streamlined access to funding that will advance important tourism projects. Over time, we plan to leverage the rich out-of-the-box banking functionality of the Temenos digital banking platform to continue to enhance the service and customer experience.”

Jean-Paul Mergeai, President – International Sales, Temenos said, “Launching a digital banking service in less than two months is a fantastic achievement. It shows the dedication and commitment of the Tourism Development Fund and its teams. TDF has bold ambitions, and Temenos’ open and flexible platform will allow TDF to continue innovating at speed and scale in the cloud as it grows. In addition to advanced technology, TDF will benefit from our 25 years of experience in the Middle East working with 120 financial institutions in the region, from digital challengers such as STCPay to the largest banks, including Al Rajhi. Together with TDF, we are proud to make access to funding that will boost tourism investment faster and easier.”

Ammara Masood, CEO and President NdcTech commented, “Our many years of experience on the Temenos platform allowed us to launch TDF’s system in such a short time on the OCI Cloud. TDF’s team was extremely collaborative, and working together as one team with Temenos made this rapid implementation possible.”

Temenos is the platform of choice for digital banks that want to launch fast. It has over 70 neo and challenger banks worldwide running on its platform, more than any other vendor, and is ranked the top seller in the category in the IBS Intelligence Sales League Table 2021.

Temenos successfully completed the project as part of a consortium led by Almoammar Information Systems (MIS) with National Data Consultants (NdcTech), Temenos’ Saudi specialized implementation partner. Working together, the combined resources and expertise ensured a smooth integration and shortened the implementation time.