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CRDB Bank, Tanzania’s largest lender by assets, has completed a major overhaul of its core banking system, migrating from Finastra’s Fusion Banking Essence (FBE) to Temenos T24. The transition, executed in early September, is part of the bank’s strategy to strengthen competitiveness in East Africa and accelerate its regional expansion.
Chief Executive Officer, Abdulmajid Nsekela, said the upgrade is central to CRDB’s growth ambitions. The bank currently operates in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and is finalising entry into Dubai to serve both diaspora and cross-border clients.
“You cannot provide services in all these countries without a robust system that safeguards customer information and ensures highly efficient transactions,” Nsekela noted.
Temenos T24, a Swiss-built, end-to-end platform, is widely adopted by leading African banks including Kenya’s KCB Group and Stanbic Bank. By joining this network, CRDB aims to integrate operations across markets and enhance service delivery for corporate and retail customers.
The new platform supports multiple languages and currencies—ranging from Swahili and English in Tanzania to French, Kirundi, and Arabic in other markets—positioning the bank to scale in diverse jurisdictions.
While core banking migrations are complex and high-risk, involving the transfer of millions of sensitive customer records, CRDB successfully completed its 72-hour exercise. Some customers reported temporary balance discrepancies during the transition, which the bank attributed to large-scale data transfers.
The upgrade underscores East African banks’ broader push to modernise technology backbones for multi-market operations. Institutions such as KCB, Equity Group, DTB, and NCBA Group have already deployed Temenos T24 or similar systems to accelerate product rollouts and enhance cross-border services.
As CRDB marks its 30th anniversary, the investment reflects its ambition to capture a larger share of corporate and diaspora banking, particularly through its planned Dubai operations focused on trade finance and remittances between East Africa and the Gulf.
The Bank of Tanzania has also been encouraging local banks to embrace system upgrades as part of ongoing financial sector reforms.
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