The Bank’s largest-ever technology investment will transform core systems, operations and digital services.
The UK’s longest-established Islamic bank is investing in technology to deliver capabilities that will rival many of the UK’s leading challenger banks.
AlRayan Bank, also the UK’s largest and most successful Islamic bank, has signed an agreement with Monument Technology to move onto a modern, cloud-based and modular banking platform.
Monument Technology’s award-winning ‘Bank in a Box’ Banking Platform as a Service (BPaaS) will provide the technology foundation for the Bank’s operations, bringing together best-of-breed capabilities across savings, current accounts, property finance products, customer servicing and digital channels within a single platform, with integration to regulatory and financial reporting.
The programme will help AlRayan Bank deliver enhanced digital services and more seamless customer experiences, while creating a simpler and more flexible technology environment and enabling new products to be launched more quickly.
Monument Technology took the original platform which is used by Monument Bank and is significantly developing it to serve the needs of other financial institutions, already including Ecology Building Society and Castle Trust Bank. Its modular design will give AlRayan Bank the flexibility to benefit from new capabilities and the upgrade or replacement of individual components as technology develops, without being forced to move to another technology provider.
It will be Monument’s first move into Islamic banking, as the sector continues to grow worldwide, with TheCityUK estimating that global Islamic finance assets will reach $10 trillion by 2030, and the UK accounting for 85% of Europe’s Islamic finance market.
Giles Cunningham, CEO of AlRayan Bank said: “This is the most significant technology investment AlRayan Bank has ever made. Start-up challengers have great technology and big banks have great brands. What we have is harder to copy: relationships with our customers built over more than twenty years, and values-based banking that they trust. This partnership will give us the technology to match.
“This agreement isn’t just a technology upgrade. It’s about giving customers the seamless digital banking they expect, and we hope it becomes a case study for how mid-sized, specialist banks can modernise without losing what makes them unique.”
Steve Britain, CEO of Monument Technology, said: “AlRayan Bank has a strong reputation, trusted relationships with its customers and ambitious plans for the future. Working with AlRayan Bank is an important step for Monument Technology, particularly as it takes us into Islamic banking and current accounts for the first time.
“Our approach is to give banks and building societies access to modern banking technology without the cost and complexity of developing and maintaining everything themselves. With three institutions now having selected our platform, we’re seeing growing interest in a model that allows banks to modernise while retaining control over how their businesses develop.”
The platform will be tailored to support the Bank’s Sharia-compliant product offering and operating model. The two organisations will now work together on detailed implementation planning, with the new platform introduced in phases to ensure customers can continue banking as normal while new capabilities and features are rolled out.
