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Opportunity International Engages Temenos to Gauge Social Impact of Microfinance on Fighting Poverty


WEBWIRE

Improved analytics on client impact to enhance understanding of philanthropic ROI


Oxford, UK - - Building a foundation for valuable insights on the impact of its mission to end global poverty, Opportunity International today announced a broadened partnership with Temenos, the market-leading provider of mission-critical solutions to the financial services industry.

Opportunity will license Insight, Temenos’ business analytics solution, to gain a deeper understanding of the beneficial impact of its work on its clients, their families and their communities. This will be the first time Insight will be used for a microfinance institution, and is emblematic of the metrics-rich, business-driven approach Opportunity seeks to apply to its operations.

As part of the agreement, Opportunity International and Temenos will work together to produce a number of social performance reports to track the direct, quantifiable impact of lending on the lives of the individual borrowers and the communities in which they live.

“As an organization, we are fine-tuning the metrics around the outcomes of our work,” said Harry Turner, head of Opportunity International’s Global Microfinance Operations Group. “This next phase with Temenos will provide clearer, more uniform measurement of the impact our financial investment in individual clients working their way our of poverty has on the quality of life for their families, communities and countries. This data will be incredibly valuable to our program strategists, as well as to our donors, as they seek a tangible return on their philanthropic dollars.”

Opportunity serves over five million people in more than 20 developing countries with small business loans, savings, insurance and financial and professional development training. In 2012, 
Opportunity loaned US$1.1 billion across 4.3 million loans, of which 93% were to women.

David Arnott, Temenos CEO, said, “Microfinance is an area of important focus for Temenos and we are delighted to have extended our relationship with Opportunity International. Up until now, Temenos’ focus in microfinance has been to provide institutions with low-cost, flexible and scalable core banking solutions that enable them to operate with the lowest possible unit costs and in turn offer the cheapest possible banking services to its end customers. As a result of the work we are doing with Opportunity International, we will be able to provide a package of the developments made to enable all microfinance institutions to accurately track the social benefits of their work”.

Founded in 1993 and listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX: TEMN), Temenos Group AG is the market-leading provider of banking software systems to retail, corporate, universal, private, Islamic, microfinance and community banks, wealth managers, and financial institutions. Headquartered in Geneva with more than 55 offices worldwide, Temenos software is proven in over 1,500 customer deployments in more than 125 countries across the world. Temenos’ products provide advanced technology and rich functionality, incorporating best practice processes that leverage Temenos’ expertise around the globe. Temenos customers are proven to be more profitable than their peers: in the period 2008-2010, Temenos customers enjoyed on average a 30% higher return on assets, a 46% higher return on capital and an 8.5 percentage point lower cost/income ratio than banks running legacy applications. For more information please visit www.temenos.com

About Opportunity International
Opportunity International provides access to savings, small business loans, insurance and training to over five million people working their way out of poverty in the developing world. Clients in over 20 countries use these financial services to start or expand a business, provide for their families, create jobs for their neighbors and build a safety net for the future. For more information, visit http://www.opportunity.org or join the conversation at http://facebook.com/opportunityintl and http://twitter.com/opportunityintl.



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