Banks today face three unstoppable forces: the need for rapid digital adoption, the surge in demand for seamless, mobile-first services, and increasingly complex regulatory requirements. These have made one thing clear: transformation is an imperative.

Across the Asia Pacific, banks are under mounting pressure from fintech disruptors and their peers who are racing ahead in their modernisation journeys. For banking leaders, the pressing question is how quickly and effectively this transformation can be achieved.

The answer lies in the strategic adoption of cloud banking through SaaS, enabled by partnerships that blend deep financial expertise with robust infrastructure.

To explore how this shift is unfolding in the region’s financial sector, Fintech News Network sat down with Frankie Wai, Business Solution Director at Temenos, and Eric Yeo, Country General Manager to AWS Vietnam, to discuss the future of cloud banking in APAC and the lessons from banks already setting the pace.

New Priorities and Challenges Defining APAC’s Banking Future

Several factors are pushing the shift in the Asia Pacific’s banking landscape. At a recent industry webinar that featured leaders such as WeLab Bank, a client of Temenos, four themes stood out.

First, digital banks are moving beyond the fight for survival and into a new phase of profitable scaling. Secondly, artificial intelligence is emerging as the engine of hyper-personalised experiences, provided it is deployed within clear ethical boundaries.

Third, open banking is starting to gain traction, enabled by more responsible approaches to data sharing and collaboration. Finally, physical branches are no longer seen as cost centres to be trimmed but as “experience hubs” that complement digital channels and strengthen customer engagement.

Frankie shares,

“With APAC’s corporate and investment banking revenues projected to exceed US$1.4 trillion and sustain 7% annual growth through 2027, institutions that master this balance will not only lead regional innovation, they will also set the benchmark for global banking practices.”

The challenge ahead lies in balancing rapid technological advancement with regulatory compliance and ethical responsibility. To this end, the strategic partnership between  Temenos and AWS has been nothing short of transformational.

Temenos’ cloud-native, cloud-agnostic architecture, paired with AWS’s fully managed services, enables banks to tailor solutions to their market needs while maintaining resilience and compliance. It gives banks the freedom to innovate.

More importantly, this strategic partnership is fuelling SaaS adoption across APAC, where digital transformation is advancing at an unprecedented pace.

Why Temenos and AWS Are Leading the Cloud Banking Shift

For Temenos, choosing the right cloud partner is critical to delivering SaaS at scale. Having supported banks worldwide in their cloud migrations, AWS brings deep financial services expertise and an understanding of the unique pressures institutions face.

By supporting more than 140 security standards and compliance features, AWS provides the resilient core that banking demands, where downtime is more than a technical issue, impacting thousands of customers and a bank’s reputation. Even financial regulators themselves run critical workloads on AWS, a testament to its reliability.

From Temenos’ perspective, this partnership directly unlocks new opportunities for banks in APAC. Data sovereignty is one of the most pressing challenges, and with AWS’s extensive local infrastructure, institutions can meet diverse regulatory requirements without the expense of redundant on-site systems.

Scalability, too, becomes effortless. Banks can lower infrastructure and operating costs while using AWS’s auto-elastic capabilities to expand seamlessly in step with business growth. This is a critical advantage in APAC, where rapid digital adoption and surging customer bases are the norm.

Speed to market is another differentiator. Cloud banking delivered on AWS enables banks to launch new solutions far more quickly than traditional on-premises setups, while also reducing operational overhead and environmental impact.

The partnership, in short, empowers APAC financial institutions to move with agility, stay compliant, and build the kind of resilience needed to thrive in an intensely competitive market.

On Faster Growth, Lower Costs, and Always-On Banking

Across the Asia Pacific, the results of Temenos and AWS’ partnership are visible through banks that have boldly and swiftly modernised their core and embraced SaaS.

In Vietnam, for example, PVcomBank strengthened its mobile experience and overcame legacy limitations by shifting to Temenos Digital Banking on AWS. Customer onboarding that once took weeks now takes minutes, acquisition has more than doubled, and over a million customers now enjoy a consistent digital journey.

Eric shares,

“More notably, PVcomBank achieved a 130 percent increase in customer acquisition, reflecting true transformational growth. Digital channel performance also saw dramatic improvement, with a 200 percent increase in customers opening deposit accounts online.”

Next, WeLab Bank in Hong Kong went from concept to launch in under 10 months, an unheard-of timeline in traditional banking. Backed by Temenos and AWS, it opened more than 10,000 accounts in its first 10 days of launch, with customers opening a bank account in five minutes.

WeLab Bank has also been able to expand while keeping infrastructure costs lean, using AWS’s auto-elastic capabilities to scale operations in line with its growth.

Meanwhile, Vietnam International Bank (VIB) has leveraged Temenos Transact on AWS to underpin its “Mobile First-Cloud First-AI First” strategy. Frankie shares,

“Under “Cloud First,” VIB migrated core banking services to the cloud to achieve dynamic scalability, seamless service delivery, and optimised operational efficiency. With “Mobile First,” the bank prioritised robust APIs, high performance, and flexible architecture to ensure uninterrupted mobile banking access and superior customer experience. Finally, “AI First” reflects VIB’s commitment to leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning for predictive analytics and personalised financial solutions.”

With 94% of retail transactions now digital, VIB has also built the kind of resilient, always-on infrastructure that allows it to roll out new services quickly and stay ahead in one of Asia’s fastest-moving markets.

From SaaS Success to the Next Wave of Innovation

These stories make one thing clear: Temenos SaaS on AWS is more than technology. It’s a catalyst for faster growth, sharper compliance, and stronger customer engagement.

For banking leaders in the region, the real question is no longer if cloud adoption should happen, but how quickly they can move to capture the same advantages. Eric emphasized,

“In this future, companies will deploy autonomous AI agents, and this vision is already taking shape. For example, Anthropic’s Claude for Enterprise is now available in the AWS Marketplace as a full-fledged software-as-a-service, and includes a Financial Analysis Solution that is tailored specifically for financial analysts, with pre-built financial data source integrations.”

With Temenos’ banking expertise and AWS’s innovation engine, from foundation models on Amazon Bedrock to high-performance chips like Trainium 2, the partnership is positioned to help APAC banks not only keep pace with change but set the standard for the industry’s future.

Discover how Temenos and AWS can help your institution scale faster and lead with confidence.

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