Maurya Murphy
Product Director
“I always work with a start-up mentality. It keeps you curious about what you do and makes you more commercially minded.”
Maurya Murphy joined Temenos four years ago to build up its corporate banking division. She works with corporate banking clients to improve their front, middle and back-office functions—a relatively new business compared with Temenos’ retail banking software. It had been seen as a bit of a “problem area,” says Maurya, because the client requirements and products were more complex and were worked on by many staff in the bank.
“A different way of engaging with customers and a new execution model were needed. The first key thing was a hearts and minds change. We had to establish our target markets, get approval for the strategy and roadmap and then go out and sell to early adopters.”
The new approach worked and the corporate lending division now has 30 customers and has carried out more than 20,000 days of product delivery. However, Maurya says the division is still on a journey and “there’s plenty more to be done,” as her team focuses on developments in cash management and trade finance.
Corporate banking itself is going through a period of transformation, both in the type of technology it needs and the way it uses it, and what its customers expect, she adds.
“The pandemic has had a huge impact on the corporate banking world. Operations staff won’t be in the office full-time again. But there are also changes, including open banking and greater availability of software consumption models. Banks are moving to the model of paying for what they consume, rather than five-year transformation projects.”
Against this backdrop, she says the good news is: “I’m seen as a change person. I’m not afraid of making the necessary changes by being very clear about where we’re going and how to execute it.”
“I’m not afraid of making the necessary changes by being very clear about where we’re going and how to execute it.”
Previous to her current role, Maurya worked for banks and software companies, most often in “greenfield build-up” projects, and joined Temenos from a fintech start-up.
“I always work with a start-up mentality,” she says. “It keeps you curious about what you do and makes you more commercially minded. A CEO I worked with previously drummed it into us that ‘these are your clients, these are the people paying your wages and that’s who you focus on.’”
As a result, Maurya has found the ethos at Temenos inspiring. “I like the independence and autonomy to identify your markets and go after them, with access to a broad and diverse client base,” she says. “Working with high-performing individuals to create empowered and impactful teams makes me feel motivated and proud.”
The “great privilege” of working for Temenos is to be a trusted adviser to her banking clients. She says: “Building up the dynamic of trust means not being afraid to say no, and explaining the implications of doing something a certain way. It also means bringing forward any bad news at an early stage in the project, so the client and our team have time to plan around it within the resources the client has budgeted for.”
Maurya says she is “honored” to be one of the small group of Founding Fellows and to be recognized by her peers in this way.