how TotalSoft is taking Charisma global

Charisma, the company’s flagship software suite, has established a name for itself among banks, leasing providers and motor finance firms in Central and Eastern Europe. Now, under Steliana Moraru’s guidance, TotalSoft is looking westward — combining local agility with AI innovation to support some of the most complex finance ecosystems in the world. Jeremy Weltman reports.

---

For three decades, TotalSoft has been building its reputation as a versatile software provider. Founded in Romania, the company specialises in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), integrated platforms designed to help organisations automate and connect their operations. Its flagship Charisma suite is well known by businesses across Central and Eastern Europe, spanning industries from banking and leasing to construction, agriculture, energy and healthcare.

Now, Steliana Moraru – TotalSoft’s head of growth for financial services, wants to take Charisma further by steering the platform into new markets and shaping it around the possibilities of artificial intelligence.

Charisma Financial Services, part of TotalSoft’s Charisma ERP platform, is specifically designed as a comprehensive asset finance solution, catering directly to the needs of companies involved in leasing, hire-purchase, loans, fleet management, and other asset-based financing models.

With over three decades of continuous evolution, Charisma stands out by offering extensive flexibility and scalability, enabling seamless adaptation to diverse operating models and compliance with local regulatory frameworks without extensive custom development. Its modular architecture allows businesses to select and integrate components based on their specific operational needs.

The platform covers the complete asset finance lifecycle, including lead generation and self-financing options, customer onboarding and origination processes, comprehensive contract management, automated billing and self-service capabilities, one-stop-shop functionalities, collections management and integrated compliance solutions.

Charisma Financial Services also incorporates key regulatory standards and digital transformation initiatives, such as IFRS compliance, e-invoicing, e-signature, centralised credit risk, SAFT-e reporting, GDPR adherence, electronic insurance management (e-insurance), and local tax codes compliance, ensuring robust support for complex, multi-jurisdictional financial operations.

Additionally, Charisma seamlessly integrates with various third-party services critical to asset finance operations, including vehicle valuation services, and KYC/AML (Know Your Customer/Anti-Money Laundering) platforms, enabling comprehensive risk management and streamlined operational efficiency.

As head of growth for financial services, Moraru manages the company’s international expansion and strategic development. She says TotalSoft’s primary focus is on mid- to large-sized financial institutions and leasing providers, particularly those managing significant contract volumes and operating across multiple jurisdictions. These organisations often face the dual challenge of scaling their operations, while navigating diverse regulatory environments.

The platform is designed to support complexity, she says, whether it is managing multiple entities, adapting to different fiscal and legal requirements, or enabling seamless collaboration across departments and regions.

“Charisma’s flexibility allows our clients to configure their operations without heavy custom development, making it ideal for businesses with ambitious growth plans,” she says.

As for the client base, it is diverse and reflects the full spectrum of the asset finance ecosystem. This includes banks and leasing subsidiaries, independent leasing and finance companies, motor finance providers, including ‘captive arms’ of auto manufacturers, and equipment finance arms for agricultural, medical, and industrial sectors, among others.

“Rooted in deep vertical expertise, Charisma delivers a comprehensive suite of capabilities, including dealer portals, origination workflows, contract management, client-facing portals, accounting integration, and collections. Each one is meticulously tailored to the distinct operational and regulatory demands of specific sectors, rather than applying a generic, one-size-fits-all approach,” says Moraru.

TotalSoft’s core market is dynamic, fast-growing, and full of potential, according to Moraru, but also highly fragmented and complex. Each country in the CEE region has its own regulatory, tax, and reporting requirements, creating significant challenges for companies operating across borders. At the same time, CEE businesses are often early adopters of technology, eager to digitise and leapfrog legacy infrastructure. Many organisations in the region have embraced cloud, automation, and mobile-first tools more rapidly than their Western counterparts, driven by both necessity and ambition.

A defining characteristic of the region is the frequency of legislative changes, especially in sectors such as financial services, public administration, and leasing, which requires software solutions that can adapt quickly. The region’s language and cultural diversity adds another layer of complexity. For example, a company operating in five CEE countries may need to support six or seven languages, multiple currencies, and a wide variety of business practices, from invoice formats to payroll structures. Additionally, while many international players are active in the CEE region, decision-making often remains local. This means that go-to-market strategies and technology implementations must be truly localised, not just translated, to be effective.

This is where Charisma offers a competitive advantage, Moraru points out. With built-in localisation, multi-language capabilities, and a highly flexible architecture, Charisma enables companies to remain compliant, act quickly, and scale efficiently across the region, without having to redesign systems for every new market.

“Our teams work closely with clients to help them navigate this complexity, while accelerating both modernisation and growth, turning regional fragmentation into a strategic opportunity,” she says.

The Covid-19 pandemic proved a turning point for digital transformation in financial services. Almost overnight, priorities shifted from incremental efficiency gains to resilience, agility and digital-first delivery. TotalSoft’s clients moved quickly to digitise customer journeys, expand remote service channels and improve transparency through real-time data, while many accelerated cloud migrations to strengthen flexibility and reduce operational risk.

TotalSoft responded by enriching its Charisma platform with new digital capabilities, from self-service portals and automated workflows to AI-driven chatbots and embedded analytics. These tools not only addressed urgent challenges during the crisis, but also set a foundation for long-term operational agility. More recently, the company has also adapted Charisma to support sustainable finance models, enabling clients to diversify into areas such as green lending while meeting evolving customer expectations and regulatory demands.

“Our aim remains clear,” says Moraru. “It is helping our clients not merely recover from disruptions, but actively evolve through them, maintaining resilience, preparedness, and competitiveness in an increasingly dynamic economic landscape.

TotalSoft’s growth strategy centres on becoming more than just a software vendor, it is aiming to be its clients preferred digital ally. That means acting as a strategic partner with success measured by the long-term impact.

From a product standpoint, the company is building vertical platforms that connect entire industry ecosystems. With its Charisma EveryWare architecture, it is democratising technology deployment, whether in the cloud, or on-site, enabling clients to scale securely, remain compliant, and unlock exponential growth.

TotalSoft is also deepening its investment in automation, AI, cloud-native services, and embedded analytics, making Charisma more intuitive, intelligent, and customisable. In parallel, it is expanding API integrations to accelerate ecosystem connectivity with banks, insurers, registries, and other partners critical to the finance value chain.

Geographically, it is focused on expanding its footprint across the EU, with particular interest in markets such as Austria, Germany, and the Benelux countries. At the same time, it is continuing to strengthen its leadership in Central and Eastern Europe and exploring strategic opportunities in other continents, where demand for structured finance platforms is on the rise.

“Our long-term ambition is to become the go-to digital backbone for asset finance providers across these diverse and fast-evolving markets,” says Moraru.

Artificial intelligence is shaping the next evolution of Charisma, not as a buzzword, says Moraru, but as a practical, embedded capability that enhances how financial services operate. “We don’t believe in replacing human judgment; we believe in augmenting it,” she says.

“That’s why we’re integrating AI across the platform in ways that create real value: conversational interfaces through chatbots and voice assistants, predictive models for risk assessment and contract performance, intelligent document processing to streamline onboarding and compliance, and AI-powered assistants to support faster, more informed decision-making.”

TotalSoft’s vision is for AI to serve as a trusted co-pilot, enhancing human expertise with real-time insights, smarter workflows, and operational agility. It is not about technology for technology’s sake, according to Moraru, but about enabling finance teams to work more intelligently, respond more quickly, and deliver better experiences to their customers. Moreover, AI is transforming how users and customers interact with the system, making it easier, faster, and more intuitive to get things done.

Moraru highlights AI as a game-changer for leasing companies, starting with a faster Time-to-Yes. By automating risk assessment with real-time data and predictive models, AI accelerates credit scoring and approvals — cutting decision times, lifting conversion rates and improving the customer experience.

Beyond speed, AI drives efficiency by removing manual work. Intelligent document processing, contract recognition and compliance automation streamline origination, KYC, onboarding and reviews, while zero-touch workflows handle applications, credit checks and contract generation with minimal intervention. Conversational chatbots and voice assistants further improve engagement, allowing customers and staff to access information or complete tasks quickly and intuitively.

AI also strengthens portfolio management. Predictive analytics forecast contract performance, residual values and customer behaviour, enabling sharper pricing, risk segmentation and proactive portfolio strategies. For companies expanding across multiple entities or jurisdictions, AI supports consistent, compliant and scalable operations. And with real-time dashboards and smart reporting, leaders gain early insight into trends, risks and performance drivers.

Embedded within the Charisma platform, these capabilities position AI not as an add-on, but as a core engine for growth, resilience and long-term competitiveness. As Moraru makes clear: “This is about empowering leasing companies to respond faster, serve customers better, and scale more intelligently in a competitive, fast-changing market.”

Founded in 1994, TotalSoft has grown into one of Central and Eastern Europe’s key providers of business software, with a workforce of 600 specialists and projects active in more than 40 countries across five continents. Over the past three decades, the company has focused on applying new technologies to streamline and digitise complex business processes for mid-sized and large enterprises.

Since 2016, TotalSoft has been part of Logo Business Investment S.A., the largest independent software provider in Turkey. Listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, Logo operates in 45 markets and serves more than 85,000 customers worldwide, providing TotalSoft with both international reach and the backing of a fast-growing, financially robust technology group.

In May 2025, TotalSoft delivered two major digital transformation projects for Deutsche Leasing Group, rolling out an upgraded Charisma ERP platform and new insurance management capabilities across more than 20 countries. The ERP upgrade modernised the system architecture for greater performance and scalability, integrated fully with Deutsche Leasing’s origination platform, and strengthened connectivity with external systems through a dual data centre migration.

At the same time, TotalSoft introduced a unified framework for insurance operations, harmonising processes globally under Deutsche Leasing’s system template. The result is full automation of financing documentation and policy management, tighter integration with contract and profitability analysis, and improved transparency across the lifecycle of insured assets. By embedding these functions into origination workflows, dealers and partners can now offer insurance directly within customer proposals, cutting manual work, streamlining risk assessment, and enhancing financial forecasting across the group.

As TotalSoft marks its 30th anniversary, the company faces a challenge familiar to many ambitious tech players: balancing the strength of its regional heritage with the drive to scale globally.

With Charisma evolving into a platform that integrates AI, cloud capabilities, and sustainability at its core, Steliana Moraru envisions more than just an opportunity to capture market share, she sees the potential to transform how financial providers operate across borders.

“We are proud of our roots in Central and Eastern Europe,” Moraru reflects. “But our vision is global. Charisma is built to help financial institutions everywhere become faster, smarter, and more resilient and that’s where we see the future of our growth.”

“From Bucharest to the boardroom: how TotalSoft is taking Charisma global” was originally created and published by Leasing Life, a GlobalData owned brand.

The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.