Tuum is on a determined path to becoming the world’s leading next-generation core banking platform. In 2024, we’ve witnessed the rapid rise of digital challengers like Nubank and Revolut, setting a fast-paced bar for innovation in financial services. To compete and stay relevant, financial institutions must rely on robust, flexible banking infrastructure that fosters innovation. This need has only intensified with the accelerated adoption of AI across the sector.
At Tuum, our vision is to be the unified platform powering retail, SME, and corporate banking. To achieve this, we’re continuously expanding our capabilities through a broad ecosystem of partners, enabling us to support a wide range of use cases. We believe successful technology must not only be adaptable but also future-ready. With the fast-growing young population in the Middle East and Africa, there’s an increasing demand for Sharia-compliant digital banking solutions, all of which can be powered by the most modern core banking platform available.
This blog provides a comprehensive review of Tuum’s progress, innovations, and strategic focus in 2024, showcasing how we are shaping the future of banking and empowering financial institutions to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape.
A Review of 2024
As we reflect on 2024, Tuum’s strategic product development and enhancements have been pivotal to our journey, each initiative carefully aligned with the evolving demands of the financial sector. This year, notable milestones such as our successful Series B funding, regional expansions, and key partnerships have all played a significant role in shaping our product roadmap. These achievements have empowered us to enrich core functionalities, introduce innovative capabilities, and remain responsive to both traditional and emerging financial needs. By effectively leveraging these developments, Tuum has reinforced its position as a catalyst for digital transformation, offering financial institutions the tools they need to expand, innovate, and achieve sustained success.
Series B Funding and Strategic Product Expansion: The EUR 25 million raised in our Series B funding round early in the year catalyzed significant advancements in our product capabilities and market reach. This capital boost allowed us to enhance our core banking platform’s features and scalability, directly influencing our ability to support complex migrations, progressive modernization and introduce new functionalities that meet diverse client needs, from traditional banking to modern fintech innovations.
Strategic Expansion into the Middle East: Our expansion into the Middle East, marked by the establishment of a regional HQ at ADGM in Abu Dhabi, was driven by the region’s fintech boom. The Middle East’s dynamic financial services market, characterized by a surge in digital banking adoption and fintech innovation, presented a fertile ground for our cloud-native, modular next generation banking solutions. This strategic move is aimed at capturing demand in a market where digital transformation is a top priority for financial institutions.
Collaboration with Google Cloud as a Strategic Catalyst: Our collaboration with Google Cloud in October was strategically chosen to leverage their strong infrastructure to support our expansion goals in the Middle East and beyond, particularly in Saudi Arabia. Google Cloud’s capabilities in handling large-scale digital transformations and its reputation as a leader in secure and sustainable cloud services are key to supporting the region’s growth catalysts. This partnership enhances our product’s scalability and security, crucial for compliance and performance in the region’s rapidly evolving financial landscape.
Launching Foundations for Islamic Banking and Finance: The initiation of our Islamic Banking and Finance solutions aligns with the significant demand for Sharia-compliant products in the Middle East and beyond. Our product development in this area was directly influenced by the region’s financial practices and ethical banking needs. By creating a robust framework for Islamic deposits and lending, we are not only expanding our product suite but also ensuring that our offerings are deeply integrated with the cultural and legal frameworks of our target markets.
Adapting to Industry Trends and Customer Needs: The ongoing trends of digital transformation and the push towards more sustainable and inclusive banking practices have guided our product development strategy. In 2024, we continued to adapt our platform to these shifts by enhancing functionalities that support multi-currency operations, digital wallets, and customized user experiences, thus responding to the global and regional demands for more adaptable and customer-focused banking solutions.
Key Product Developments
2024 has been a year of significant innovation and strategic advancements for Tuum. In this section, we highlight the pivotal product developments that have strengthened our platform’s capabilities and expanded our service offerings. From enhancing our core banking functionalities to introducing groundbreaking features in payments and lending, each development reflects our commitment to driving the future of digital banking.
Q1 Highlights
- Core Banking: Enhanced reporting capabilities, including improved journals, turnovers, and balances. Added multi-tenancy support for chart of accounts, applicable across multiple regions.
- Payments: Introduced ISO20022 support for external payment integrations, enhancing compatibility and efficiency. New features include label and scheme-based support for external payments routing and pricing, alongside an improved intrabank payments settlement process.
- Lending: Rolled out Shariah-compliant lending contracts and extended support for manual contract creation, catering to business lending needs.
- Cards: Developed label-based fees and pricing, along with batch ordering improvements for high-volume transaction environments.
- General Updates: Achieved SOC2 compliance, reaffirming our commitment to the highest standards of data security and privacy. Increased support for our multi-cloud strategy, notably enhancing our infrastructure through a significant collaboration with Google Cloud Provider (GCP). This strategic move with GCP not only supports our regional customers but also underscores our dedication to product extensibility and robust security, enabling us to deliver more tailored and responsive banking experiences.
Q2 Highlights:
- Core Banking: Implemented support for group accounts and physical cash pooling, along with automatic tax deduction on deposit interest payouts.
- Payments: Enhanced external payment integrations with features like payment recalls and automatic reconciliation of nostro accounts, streamlining operations for payment service providers.
- Lending: Expanded loan migration capabilities and introduced custom loan schedules, supporting complex product offerings for the SME and corporate banking sectors.
- Cards: Improved chargeback processing and introduced Mastercard quarterly reporting, enhancing credit card management.
- General Updates: Delivered a proof of concept for product extensibility, alongside achieving PCI DSS certification.
Q3 Highlights:
- Core Banking: Launched features like independent limit changes and custom end dates for deposits, enhancing flexibility.
- Payments: Introduced comprehensive updates for SEPA direct debit and external AML processes, along with expanding FX payment capabilities through universal payment integrations.
- Lending: Advanced our offerings with new functionalities like total cost calculations and support for fees as a percentage of the disbursement amount, optimizing lending operations.
- Cards: Enhanced card fraud rules management and network transaction handling, improving security and efficiency for card operations.
- General Updates: Enhanced single customer view reporting and continued developments in multi-tenancy support, reflecting our ongoing commitment to customer-centric innovations.
Q4 Highlights:
- Core Banking: Developed a profit-sharing module to support Islamic products and introduced agent account creation features.
- Payments: Expanded SEPA Direct Debit capabilities and enhanced payment templates for rapid payment creation.
- Lending: Introduced smoother user experiences for contract management and initiated developments in Islamic and asset finance.
- Cards: Extended fraud rules management and introduced card digitization for platforms like Apple Pay and Google Pay, broadening digital wallet accessibility.
- General Updates: Released design components for rapid user experience development and integrated essential business tools, facilitating smoother operations and enhanced user experiences.
Industry Recognition and Awards
In 2024, Tuum’s commitment to innovation and excellence in core banking technology was recognized extensively within the fintech industry, earning us multiple prestigious awards and accolades that validate our influence and leadership in the sector.
Key Recognitions:
- Celent Retail Banking Core Systems: Tuum was named a Luminary and Functionality Standout in Celent’s Next-Generation Core Banking Edition 2024. This recognition highlights our ability to deliver transformative and scalable solutions tailored to the needs of banks of all sizes, further solidifying our position as leaders in next-generation core banking.
- IBSi Global Finance Innovation Award: We received the Best Core Banking Implementation award for our work with LHV Bank. This project was instrumental in helping LHV secure its UK banking license and achieve significant operational efficiencies, showcasing the real-world impact of our core banking platform.
- IDC Marketscape for Digital Core Banking Platforms (EMEA) 2024: Tuum was listed as a major player, an acknowledgment of our strategic positioning and influence in shaping digital core banking solutions across the EMEA region.
- Celent Model Bank Award for Core Transformation: Our client, OP Financial Group, was awarded the 2024 Celent Model Bank for Core Transformation, underscoring the success and impact of implementing Tuum’s core banking platform in their significant banking overhaul.
- Omdia: ‘On the Radar: Tuum: Omdia’s produced a vendor assessment report, ‘On the Radar: Tuum delivers a modern approach to core banking,’ which provides a comprehensive analysis of how Tuum is revolutionizing the financial services landscape, highlighting our impactful contributions and forward-thinking strategies.
Additional Accolades:
- The Top 100 Financial Technology Companies of 2024 by The Financial Technology Report and CB Insights’ 2024 Fintech 100: Both listings recognized Tuum as one of the most promising private fintech companies globally, highlighting our innovative approach and rapid growth within the financial technology landscape.
- Sifted 250 Leaderboard and Accel’s Fintech 50 EMEA: These placements emphasize our status as one of the fastest-growing and most innovative fintech companies in the EMEA region, reflecting our commitment to driving forward the digital transformation of banking.
- The Top 50 Financial Technology CEOs of 2024: Our CEO, Myles Bertrand, was recognized for his visionary leadership and significant contributions to the financial technology industry, which have been pivotal in Tuum’s rise as a key player in core banking modernization.
These awards and recognitions are not just accolades but are testaments to Tuum’s pivotal role in modernizing and transforming the banking industry. They underscore our value proposition based on the pillars of Renovation, Innovation, and Acceleration — from our smart migration approach that enables banks to quickly and safely renovate their IT estates, to our system’s capability for launching new business lines and models rapidly, and our platform’s high modularity and performance that provide banks the agility to expand and operate at internet scale.
In short, Tuum sets banks free from legacy constraints, empowering them to capitalize on the possibilities of digitization to lower costs, grow revenues, and delight their customers.
As we reflect on 2024’s achievements, we’re already looking ahead to the exciting innovations and opportunities on the horizon for 2025. Discover how Tuum plans to continue driving customer-centric digital transformation and empowering financial institutions to thrive in the digital age.
Download our 2025 Roadmap: Empowering Customer-Centric Digital Transformation and explore the strategic initiatives and cutting-edge technologies that will shape the future of banking.
Get in touch to find out more.