What does a Triple’A Plus consultant do and how to become one?
Triple’A Plus (also known as Triple A+ and TAP) is a complete front-office portfolio management application maintained by Temenos. The product was initially developed by Odyssey Financial Technologies, which Temenos acquired in 2010 for USD 81 million. Although many financial institutions all over the world, including ABN AMRO, Allied Irish Banks, Banco de la Nación del Peru, Bank SinoPac, Credit Suisse, Nordea Investment Funds, Orange Bank Africa, and Virgin Money Australia, use TAP software with remarkable results, the technical employees skilled in this specialized technology are very scarce.
This talent shortage represents a unique opportunity for tech-savvy individuals searching for an in-demand specialization, particularly those already interested in the banking and finance industry, wealth management, and investment advisory. In this article, you’ll find a detailed breakdown of what exactly Triple’A Plus is and who uses it, what responsibilities TAP consultants have, what skills they utilize, and how to become a Triple’A consultant in a bank.
What is Triple’A Plus?
Triple’A Plus by Temenos is a digital wealth management solution that serves as a complete tool for banking professionals working with mass affluent to ultra-high net worth customers.
At the core, TAP consists of a Windows-based application (Triple’A Plus Graphical User Interface) and a web-based application (Triple’A Plus Web User Interface) on the client side, as well as financial and database servers that are usually maintained on-premises. Portfolio Managers use the desktop app to interact with user profiles and other significant components. Both PMs and their clients can use the web app to manage financial portfolios.
The product is highly customizable and integrates with other applications to further enhance its capabilities. T24 is a back-office solution offered by Temenos, often used in conjunction with Triple A’ Plus. IBM Transformation Extender is typically used to connect TAP with third-party apps. Integration with Actuate allows for creating clients’ reports.
TAP use cases
Being a complete front-office portfolio management solution, Triple’A Plus supports wealth managers and investment advisors in multiple ways. For example, they use TAP for valuation, portfolio modeling and rebalancing, order management, risk, performance and return analyses, trading, cash account operations, and client reporting.
"Temenos Triple'A Plus is a market leading Portfolio & Wealth Management System for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth customers. It has a lot of rich functionalities across portfolio modeling, client profiling, reporting, order generation, proposal generator, compliance, performance, and many more. To learn and work on Triple'A Plus is really a great experience."
- Siddhesh Bhatt, Triple'A Plus Consultant
Jobs for Triple’A Plus specialists
IT experts in Triple’A Plus spaces work in teams and have various specializations. For example, TAP testers, TAP platform service engineers, Triple’A Plus technical consultants, and Triple’A developers have different duties.
Some TAP consultants define and customize Triple’A Plus GUI components with a TAP-specific scripting language; others use Design Studio to create specific implementations of Triple’A WUI. Reporting experts use Actuate for data analysis and visualization, and interface specialists use WTX to connect TAP with third-party applications. The Quality Assurance team tests all custom elements that TAP developers make to suit the company’s requirements. Platform service engineers are mainly responsible for system maintenance and availability.
Examples of typical TAP-related responsibilities
- Software installation, upgrading, and migration
- Software customization development, testing, and implementation
- Customizing TAP GUI and TAP WUI to suit the company’s requirements
- Connecting TAP to third-party tools
- SQL queries development.
- Hardware configuration and resource allocation for optimal performance
- Maintaining the system availability
- Analyzing system logs and troubleshooting
- Fixing customization issues
Examples of Triple’A Plus projects
Triple’A Plus’s reputation for being such a reliable product comes largely from the full-time support dedicated consultants and engineers provide - from the implementation phase through everyday maintenance to upgrades and customizations. Most banks do not have enough TAP expertise internally, so they often rely on vendors who employ specialized Triple’A Plus consultants, especially for TAP implementation, upgrade, and migration projects.
Implementation projects
Banks that are new to Triple’A Plus software need to start with implementing the whole solution from scratch. These projects can last a while. Afterward, consultants are usually asked to stay to support future upgrades.
"TAP is an advanced front-office portfolio management system that combines the abilities of enterprise-level software with the simplicity of usage associated with excel sheets. The sheer amount of customization options available to the consultants make this software very implementation friendly."
- Hemantha Shankarachar, Triple'A Plus Consultant
Upgrade projects
While upgrading TAP to higher versions, consultants must ensure that the client’s unique customizations are unaffected. Upgrades also take a long time since the upgraded product must be stable and proven reliable before going live.
Change Request projects
Teams that work on customizations based on clients’ specific requirements usually work in Agile methodology to design and implement tailor-made solutions. CR projects involve development, testing, bug fixing, and deployment.
Migration projects
There are two types of these projects. Usually, a financial institution will desire to migrate its previous solution to TAP. Sometimes, the TAP environment itself needs to be migrated to another system. Consultants ensure that no issues arise from these changes and that all data is transferred correctly.
Skills you need to succeed in the TAP ecosystem
Triple’A Plus is a complex solution that requires specialized knowledge about the product. Consultants must be familiar with TAP scripting, TAP GUI and WUI components, and TAP Business Functions and possess more platform-specific skills. Temenos provides tools and resources on their Developer Portal, as well as offers official Temenos training and certification for the ecosystem experts. Sometimes, companies also provide such training to new joiners.
Apart from the requirements mentioned above, you may need experience in:
- IBM ITX/WTX
- Design Studio
- Actuate
- Sybase
- SQL queries development
- UNIX operation systems and shell scripting
- Batch processing
- Quality Assurance, including functional, regression, and user acceptance testing
- Agile/Scrum
Moreover, possessing these “soft skills” will be beneficial:
- knowledge of digital banking
- leadership and ownership competencies
- teamwork and communication abilities
How to become a Triple’A Plus expert?
Acquiring platform-specific skills is essential for all Triple’A Plus roles. You can start by joining Temenos Learning Community, which offers subscription access to official training and certification. Alternatively, if you’re experienced with at least some of the other required skills, you can search for employment in a IT workforce consulting company that provides such training to new joiners.
