Techcombank is entering another stage of its technology transformation as it modernises the core infrastructure supporting an increasingly broad financial group.

The Vietnamese private commercial bank has expanded beyond lending into securities, wealth management and insurance, supported by investments in cloud, digital platforms and engineering capabilities. Its core banking platform is now part of that transformation.

Techcombank describes the core programme as one of its key transformation projects, positioning it as infrastructure for its next growth cycle, including a target to double its customer base by 2030. Its 2025 annual report said the new architecture is designed to support 3,000 transactions per second while shortening product time-to-market by 50%.

John Nguyen, Initiative Director for Core Banking Transformation at Techcombank, said the bank is moving from Temenos R18 to R25 after falling seven releases behind. The older platform had become increasingly difficult to maintain as transaction volumes and computing requirements grew and the group expanded.

The migration itself, however, is only the first step. Techcombank is initially moving much of its existing product structure onto R25 before progressively redesigning products and reducing the functions that need to sit inside the core. The distinction matters because upgrading technology without changing the products and processes around it does not necessarily transform the bank.

Migration comes before transformation

Techcombank has deliberately separated the technical upgrade and platform modernisation from the redesign of its banking products. Nguyen said the first stage is largely an upgrade from R18 to R25, modernising the underlying infrastructure while retaining the existing product framework. He acknowledged that moving the existing products largely as they are does not in itself constitute product transformation.

The bank wants to take the opportunity to reimagine its products and progressively introduce them onto the new architecture. This reduces the number of variables changed during the initial migration but shifts much of the eventual business value to the next stage.

It also avoids assuming that everything accumulated in the existing core should simply be reproduced in the new one. Techcombank has already been reducing some of the functionality historically embedded in the core. Nguyen cited pricing, limits and other processes among the capabilities being separated, with decisions based on where the bank can create greater flexibility.

The objective is a lighter core focused more narrowly on essential banking and transaction functions, surrounded by services that can change independently.

Techcombank had already set out this direction in its 2024 technology strategy, describing a move towards a “lean core” in which capabilities including pricing, limit management and payment hubs would be decoupled from traditional banking functions. At the time, the bank said it was evaluating a more flexible core for implementation over the following two to three years.

Data increasingly sits around the core

That architecture becomes more important as Techcombank makes greater use of data for customer decisions. Nguyen said information from the core is continuously streamed into the bank's data environment, creating an operational data model that can feed origination and other systems. The bank can then use customer information to support decisions, including product selection and pricing.

The long-term goal is to connect real-time customer information with personalised offerings so that employees interacting with customers are more relevant and in tune with customer needs.

AI remains a developing capability

Techcombank is adopting an AI-first strategy. Nguyen said the bank has accelerated its AI journey, although AI takes time to train and employees need to develop the skills to use it effectively. Within technology, AI is increasingly being used across the software development lifecycle, including development, assessment and other tasks, to complement employees and improve productivity.

The more immediate question is whether modernising the core removes constraints that would otherwise make those changes progressively harder.

A lighter core changes technology dependency

Nguyen said Temenos and systems integrators bring experience from implementations at other banks, but Techcombank also needs to retain sufficient internal capability rather than becoming excessively dependent on external providers.

He was particularly direct about the role of systems integrators. Their value, he argued, is not simply to execute what the bank requests. Because they may have implementation experience that the client does not, they sometimes need to challenge the bank more forcefully when they believe decisions introduce unnecessary risk.

Systems Limited is supporting Techcombank’s core transformation as its systems integrator. Nguyen said the company had helped the bank think through aspects of the programme and brought experience from implementations elsewhere that could help identify execution risks earlier.

A lighter core can reduce dependence on a single monolithic platform, but it does not eliminate technology dependency. It changes what the bank has to integrate and the capabilities it needs to retain internally.

That places greater importance on architecture and engineering capability inside the bank as more specialised components have to operate together reliably.

Techcombank Group is positioning the wider transformation to support its growth strategy through 2030.

The harder work comes after migration

Asked whether the core would remain part of Techcombank's architecture through 2030, Nguyen said he expected it would, although it would potentially perform fewer functions.

He said it remained unclear how much functionality the core would ultimately perform as banks continue to hollow out and simplify core systems to make future upgrades easier.

Techcombank is therefore not replacing the core with its data platform or AI. It is trying to establish clearer boundaries between transaction processing and the increasingly specialised services surrounding it.

The harder test comes afterwards: what Techcombank removes from the core, what it redesigns rather than simply migrates, and whether connecting real-time data, pricing and AI produces better customer and financial outcomes without recreating complexity elsewhere.