Sterling Bank says locally built core banking application processed 2 billion transactions in first year  

Sterling Bank, a Nigerian tier-2 bank with a market capitalisation of ₦390.9 billion, has said its homegrown core banking application (CBA), SEABaaS, processed two billion transactions over the past year without downtime.

The lender switched from T24, built by Geneva-headquartered Temenos AG, to SEABaaS as part of a wave of core banking migrations across the financial sector in 2024. While peers such as GTBank and Access Bank leaned on foreign platforms like Finacle, Sterling placed its trust in a custom-built local platform. At the time of the migration, more than three million Sterling customers were locked out of banking services for days, sparking frustration on social media.

The shift came at a time when Nigerian banks were under pressure to optimise costs while handling exploding digital transaction volumes. Depending on the specifications of the core banking application, Nigerian commercial banks spend at least $10 million annually, according to a TechCabal report.

Abubakar Suleiman, CEO at Sterling Bank, said on Tuesday that migrating to the platform has saved the bank millions of dollars in fees. Bazara Tech Inc. and Peerless Technologies jointly built SEABaaS, and on Tuesday, Peerless said, “Beyond efficiency, SeaBaas has directly contributed to over $10 million in operational savings delivered to our customers.”

Suleiman noted that the core banking migration has led to a surge in transaction volumes, with the bank on a customer acquisition spree. “Transaction volumes are soaring while our acquisition – the number of new customers choosing Sterling- has broken records eight months in a row,” he said.

According to Peerless, more than five million end-users are now served through SEABaaS-powered platforms. The Alternative Bank and ARM are listed on the company’s website.

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