Temenos Acquires a SaaS-based, Patented, Explainable AI (XAI) Platform

This week, a Banking software company has acquired a SaaS-based Explainable AI (XAI) Platform! The AI world is truly collapsing under its own weight, only to extract more value out of it. We are talking about Temenos acquiring AI fintech company based out of London, Logical Glue. Through this acquisition, Temenos will bring cutting-edge innovation to the banking industry by helping banks explain in plain language to their customers and regulators how AI-based decisions are taken.

Temenos has announced it has completed the acquisition of Logical Glue Ltd., a London-based provider of a patented, award-winning Explainable AI (XAI) platform with financial clients in the UK and Europe. The acquisition accelerates Temenos’ AI roadmap by bringing together a patented, proven, industry-first XAI platform, AI credit scoring models that are immediately available worldwide as well as deep AI and Machine Learning expertise.

At the time of this announcement, Max Chuard, Chief Executive Officer, Temenos, said,

“This is a highly strategic acquisition for Temenos as it accelerates our AI roadmap, brings an impressive team onboard that is immersed in AI and Machine Learning and builds upon the work carried out by Temenos’ AI Centre of Excellence. Logical Glue is a true innovator and their patented, award-winning Explainable AI platform and AI credit scoring models are unique in the banking industry.”

What is Explainable AI?

Explainable AI is also referred to as Interpretable AI or Transparent AI. Transparent AI/ XAI can deliver on promises of data trust that often lacks during human and M2M interactions.

Max explains, ” XAI is a game-changer for our customers. It will give them greater transparency and explainability of AI automated decisions and recommendations helping them harness AI technology to create seamless customer journeys and automate manual processes while meeting the growing regulatory demands. The Logical Glue XAI platform will be immediately integrated with Temenos’ cloud-native, cloud-agnostic banking platform and will be available with all Temenos products giving our customers, the next generation of AI-powered explainable applications.”

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The Logical Glue XAI platform will be immediately embedded within the Cloud-native, Cloud-agnostic Temenos banking platform and will be available with all Temenos software including digital front office, core banking, wealth management, payments and fund administration products. This will provide banks with the next generation of AI-powered applications irrespective of the choice of cloud that banks decide to deploy the platform or on-premise. By embedding AI and Machine Learning into its products, Temenos will accelerate the release of explainable models that will underpin new AI use cases that focus on creating seamless customer journeys and automating manual processes with self-learning capabilities.

AI credit scoring models are immediately available worldwide and will take manual underwriting to the next level through AI automated decision making and recommendations that are transparent and explainable to the end-user. Additional use cases include Robo-advisor, intelligent pricing, product recommendation, real-time fraud detection, and debt collection products.

The XAI platform will be fully integrated with the Temenos Data Lake to give banks a real-time, end-to-end Smart Data Lake, offering higher quality and richness of data through multiple sources. This means that banks can make faster, more accurate and explainable decisions driven by AI algorithms. All these products can be consumed either through an easy-to-use interface or through APIs and can be delivered on-premise, in the cloud or as a SaaS offering. The provision of explainable AI as part of the Temenos platform is central to the Temenos strategy to deliver both cloud-agnostic as well as on-premise products to banks.

Logical Glue’s Explainable AI platform addresses one of the key challenges for banks using AI applications, which is that they typically operate as ‘black boxes’ offering little if any discernible insight into how they reach their decisions. Regulators globally are increasingly mandating that financial institutions should be able to explain to their customers the results of automated decisions that affect them.

For example, Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) includes ‘a right to explanation’ for all decisions made by AI algorithmic systems while the US Equal Credit Opportunity Act compels creditors and lenders to provide specific reasons to borrowers when negative decisions have been taken.

Professor Hani Hagras, co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Logical Glue Ltd., said,

We are delighted and excited to be joining the Temenos family at this hugely exciting time. Since 2012, Logical Glue has been at the forefront of machine learning and artificial intelligence and we are fearlessly passionate about advancing the potential of Explainable AI. With our patented, cutting-edge XAI platform and our highly experienced machine learning experts, we are helping financial institutions harness the explosive power of XAI and helping them master AI decision making. We are excited to combine our strengths with Temenos’ expertise, reach and passion. Together, I am sure we will be able to transform the industry.”

London based Logical Glue Ltd. was co-founded in 2012 by Professor Hani Hagras, who is an award-winning, global expert in Fuzzy Logic and XAI systems and the most highly cited researcher in the area of XAI. Logical Glue has developed a patented XAI platform based on Fuzzy Logic and has won numerous awards, including the Lord Stafford Achievement in Innovation Award and the Most Innovative Cloud Product by the Computing Excellence Awards. It has built a team of highly skilled individuals with deep expertise in AI and Machine Learning.

Temenos has acquired Logical Glue for GBP 12 million. The acquisition will be non-IFRS EPS neutral in 2019 and accretive from 2020.

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