Arab Tunisian Bank (ATB), a 134-branch universal bank serving retail, SME and corporate customers, has completed the first phase of a migration to Temenos' open platform for composable banking — part of a broader push across Tunisia's banking sector to replace legacy infrastructure with cloud-capable, modular technology.
What went live
The completed phase covers core banking systems for both ATB's retail and corporate business lines, including Temenos' banking capabilities for accounts, lending, deposits, and financial crime mitigation. In practice, that means the bank's day-to-day account management, loan processing and deposit handling now run on modern, composable infrastructure rather than the older systems most Tunisian banks have relied on for decades.
A second phase, still in planning at the time of go-live, is set to bring digital banking capabilities, payments processing, and enterprise risk management onto the same platform — extending the modernization from back-office infrastructure into the customer-facing products that determine how competitive ATB can be against newer fintech entrants.
Why it matters beyond one bank
ATB, part of the Arab Bank Group — one of the Middle East's largest financial institutions — employs around 1,300 people across its Tunisian branch network. A bank of that scale moving to composable infrastructure is a signal to the rest of the sector: core banking modernization in Tunisia is no longer optional groundwork reserved for the most digitally ambitious players, but a competitive necessity as fintech startups chip away at services banks once had to themselves.
"A modern, agile banking platform is vital for developing distinctive products and services," said ATB CEO Ahmed Rjiba at the time of the announcement.
William Moroney, Temenos' Managing Director for the Middle East & Africa, framed the move in similar terms, noting that ATB could now draw on "unmatched breadth of composable banking capabilities" to accelerate product delivery and operational efficiency. The migration was carried out with local implementation partner Information Technology Solutions and Services (ITSS).
Part of a sector-wide shift
ATB's move sits alongside Tunisia's broader fintech infrastructure push — the Central Bank of Tunisia's regulatory sandbox, launched in 2020, and a wave of digital-payments adoption accelerated by the pandemic. As more Tunisian banks modernize their core systems, the technical barrier that once separated legacy banks from agile fintech challengers continues to narrow, raising the competitive stakes for both sides.